CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 



BOOKS BY 
GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK 

NINEVEH, AND OTHER POEMS 

A GAME AT LOVE, AND OTHER 
PLAYS 

THE HOUSE OF THE VAMPIRE 

CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 



I 



CONFESSIONS OF A 
BARBARIAN ^ 



By 
GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK 




NEW YORK 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
1910 



^43 



T$3 



Ct 



Copyright, igio, by 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

New York 



Published Aprils igro 



(gClAc- 01522 



FROM 

THE AUTHOR OF THIS 

TO 

THE AUTHOR OF HIS EXISTENCE 

Jfran^ (^eorg Cbtuin Houisf OTiitfjolb ^iereck 

WHO 

WHATEVER HE MAY THINK OF THEM 

INSPIRED THESE PAGES 



PREFACE 

This book reveals America to herself by Inter- 
preting Europe. I stand in symbolic relation, so 
to speak, to both hemispheres. My twofold racial 
consciousness serving as a fulcrum, I am enabled 
to pry two worlds — Archimedes aspired to lift but 
one — out of the furrow of their mutual miscon- 
ception. 

I have seen the soul of the subtle siren Europe. 
I have chronicled facts from her unwritten history, 
from the secret pages of diplomatic portfolios. 
From her have I also learned verities greater than 
facts. I may speak ex cathedra: infallibility I 
claim not. I have emulated not the labored mi- 
nuteness of old school painters who, numbering 
each hair of the head, make themselves rivals of 
God, but the thumbnail sketches of Whistler and 
the chromatic riots of Boecklin. 

My book, though published serially in William 
Marlon Reedy's brave weekly. The Mirror, is 
journalism only In the sense In which that term 
may also be applied to the Reisehilder of Heine. 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

If the dramatic poet may fashion himself to the 
exigencies of the stage, shall not literature disguise 
itself unreproved in the cloak of news? Only 
those are of all time who, like Rabelais, Cervan- 
tes, and Voltaire, are in immediate touch with their 
own time. 

Having navigated unknown seas of Germanic 
psychology, I chart them. I trace the tangled 
lines of an elder civilization. I record spiritual 
data that elude Baedeker. The guileless Amer- 
ican mind rebels against certain peculiarities in the 
culture of Europe. I have dived through troubled 
waters as one dives for the pearl, to discover their 
hidden meanings, the wisdom encrusted in all 
things ancient. 

I urge Europe's gospel of tolerance. I lead 
those who follow me out of the Babylonian cap- 
tivity of Puritan prejudice. I have been accused 
of posing, because, in a world of antinomies, I am 
an inveterate truth-teller. This is my flesh and 
blood. I could not more frankly denude myself 
in the sanctity of the Confessional. I speak with 
the truthfulness of Saint Augustine, of Rousseau, 
and of George Moore. 

George Sylvester Viereck. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. THE OLD WORLD LURE . 

IL FIRST SHOCKS 

HL THE STATE IDEA . 

IV. " S. M.'' .... 

V. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 

VI. INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 

VII. THE MORALS OF EUROPE 

VIII. ADAM AND EVE . 

IX. SOME WOMEN 

X. INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 

XI. THINGS LITERARY 

XII. THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN . 

XIII. GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS . 

XIV. WE AND EUROPE . 
XV. I AND AMERICA . 



I 

9 
24 

37 

51 

63 

74 

85 

97 

115 

132 

149 

166 

177 

196 



IX 



CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 
CHAPTER I 

THE OLD WORLD LURE 

I HAVE no intention of rivaling Baedeker. I 
met him abroad. He is an excellent man, the 
distinguished son of a distinguished father — high 
priests of travel both. Far be it from me to take 
the bread from his mouth. 

It gave me a curious feeling to meet Baedeker. 
It was almost like meeting the Encyclopedia 
Britannica. I had always thought of him as a little 
red book, not as a man. I don't remember what 
we said. Probably it was of no special significance. 

One speaks of sins of omission. Why not of 
virtues? Besides, I am not a vender of useful 
Information. I don't like scenery. I detest things. 
And of geography I have a positive horror. The 
distinguished Harvard professor was not far from 
right when he said I was more interested in myself 
than in Europe. 

I am an inveterate individualist. Men and ideas 
are to me the only realities. Even we human 
beings are but ideas incarnate, particles mys- 



2 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

terious and vibrant of the great world-brain. Per- 
haps, as Heine suggests, life Is only the fevered 
dream of some malevolent demon? 

We are not theologians, however. Without in- 
quiring Into primary causes, we ponder with 
changing emotions the prism of the world. Of its 
multiple aspects some to us are exciting and novel. 
We respond less readily to stimuli already fa- 
miliar. To the weary eyes of the gods all things 
are hued with Indifference. I shall depict the ex- 
ceptional from an exceptional visual angle. 

I admit I am very unjust, and surely mislead- 
ing. The grotesque piques my curiosity. I over- 
emphasize sex. Nevertheless, I am truthful. I 
practice all the Christian virtues, without faith in 
any. If my impressions are colored — they are — 
there is always Baedeker to fall back upon. There 
is consolation in statistics, and an antidote in the 
atlas. 

Not long before my trip abroad I had lunch at 
the Astor with the German novelist Felix Hollan- 
der, literary adviser of the Deutsche Theater in 
Berlin. We looked out upon Long Acre Square. 
My visitor was disappointed. It seemed to him 
that we were already too sophisticated, too civi- 
lized. He had not expected Indians in City Hall, 
but he deplored the absence of the vigorous primi- 
tive note which the imagination of the Old World 
associates with the New. 

I assured him that our seeming culture is all 



THE OLD WORLD LURE 3 

superficial. Can we learn in a century, except par- 
rot-wise, the lesson of five thousand years? With 
us It is all veneer. Scratch the American and the 
aboriginal Indian appears. 

The savage, to be sure, is more interesting at 
times than the sophist. But he is utterly absurd 
when he is ashamed of himself, or pretends to be 
civilized. The average American in literature and 
in morals is a Hottentot wearing a stove-pipe. 
His sophistication is unreal. His wisdom is 
shrewdness. His vices are ordinary, his religious 
convictions shallow. He is good-natured, but 
ignorant and irreverent. He has the heart of a 
child and the conceit of a monkey. 

Abroad they imagine that our minds are as vast 
as our lands. They credit us intellectually with 
the expansiveness of the Harriman roads and the 
subtlety of the Standard Oil. They don^t under- 
stand that we have subdued the forces of nature 
materially without having conquered them in 
spirit. We do not penetrate to the heart of things. 
The poetry of commerce eludes us. We build 
highroads between continents, without imagina- 
tion. Our outlook is provincial. We utterly lack 
pnesse. 

Our patriotism is the only imaginative ingredi- 
ent in our national structure. It is crude at that — 
and hysterical. And it does not prevent us from 
cheating our country in business. Our savagery 
is apparent in our mediaeval administration of 



4 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

justice; in our vulgar disregard of aesthetics for 
morals; above all, in our absurd and insincere 
worship of females. The American man has 
rightly been called the pay-monkey of the Amer- 
ican woman. He pays for her lingerie as well as 
her folly. She is protected, set aside, placed on a 
pedestal, both by the law and by custom. He is 
defenseless. Our government is a matriarchy in 
disguise. 

I was born on the Continent, but brought up in 
America. My racial consciousness is distinctly 
dual. I am at home in America. I have an in- 
sider's view. But an insider's view from the out- 
side — dispassionate, impartial. Yet I am not em- 
barrassed for a thread in the labyrinth of Europe. 
I need both countries as a legless man needs his 
crutches. 

Europe is essential to my well-being. I must 
bathe periodically in the fount of its authentic 
civilization, wallow in its corruption, soar in its 
dreams. Still, I am too much of an American to 
lose myself in it altogether. I have seen its depths 
and its heights. I have conversed with counts and 
cabbies, art students and ambassadors, scientists, 
soldiers, privy councilors and prostitutes. There 
was much that I admired, and much that de- 
pressed me. 

I tried to understand it all, and to make the 
best of it. At every step I became increasingly 
conscious of being constituted differently from the 



THE OLD WORLD LURE 5 

people I met and saw. But the first Impressions 
were overwhelming. When, alone and a stranger, 
I entered Berlin, the luminous heart of Europe, 
my emotions were those of a young Barbarian who 
had crossed the Alps for the first time, and for the 
first time saw Rome. 

The trip Itself held no allurements for me. Like 
Oscar Wilde, I am bored by the ocean. I prefer 
sherbets to sunsets. I am, however, not Insensible 
to the loveliness of the visible world. But I can- 
not take it, as Germans drink beer. In slow sips. 
I gulp it down, like a cocktail. 

It is absurd to go abroad in the summer when 
everybody is In the country. I went late In the 
fall. There were only a few people on board. 
Mostly musical students. There were two fllrta- 
tive Western girls with their mother. The mother 
was like a hen — an intelligent hen. The girls 
were singing birds — pretty and flighty. 

One of the girls on board had large eyes like a 
doe. They tell me her voice was charming. She 
had scraped together every cent to study abroad. 
And she was very grateful for every little atten- 
tion. It hurt me when she laughed. I always felt 
somehow as though she were going down to some 
tragic cataclysm. 

I hope she will never see this. 

Then there was a flute-player, a spirited little 
girl, with whom I was In love for two hours, while 
the train rolled from Cuxhaven to Hamburg. 



6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

The men were In the minority. There was a 
coarse ship's physician. And there was Hans. 
Hans was a sailor-boy, eighteen summers old, and 
absolutely delightful. The women made posi- 
tively indecent advances to him which they would 
hardly have made to a social equal. The boy, 
clever, well-educated, requited their efforts with 
smiling contempt. They saw only the smile. The 
contempt escaped them. 

In the first cabin were only three men passen- 
gers and a tenor. The tenor had no voice. One 
of the men was a Chicago physician, whom the law 
permitted to practise and to kill within the confines 
of the United States, but who went to Vienna to 
acquire more precise methods of murder. The 
Standard Oil Octopus was also represented on 
board. It had one of its tentacles there: a young 
engineer. I looked upon him with awe, as one 
looks upon a policeman. 

The Standard Oil Company is the most awe- 
inspiring thing in the United States. It is more 
stable than the government. Certainly it is more 
powerful and of more profit to us. Trust mag- 
nates, like politicians, work for their own pockets. 
But trust magnates can afford to be more mag- 
nanimous. The Trust, being productive, cannot 
enrich itself without enriching the country. 

I completed the masculine trio. 

We spent most of the time in the smoking- 
room, discussing women, — the three men and the 



THE OLD WORLD LURE 7 

tenor. I did the talking. The trip was a liberal 
education — for them. I painted the Eldorado 
of Europe In glowing colors. 

Not that I believed In that Eldorado. I was 
afraid that I would be horribly disappointed. Yet 
Intellectual curiosity urged me on. I sometimes 
seem to myself like the Wandering Jew In Otto 
Julius Blerbaum's Selfsame Geschichten, doomed 
ever to seek for the truth without behevlng In Its 
existence. 

Emotionally I was totally apathetic, until we 
approached the British Isles and the Old World 
Lure began to exert upon me its Irresistible fasci- 
nation. Vast and multi-colored vistas came to me 
on the pinions of memory when I realized with a 
thrill that the jagged line at my left hand was 
Shakespeare's England and that " the pleasant 
land of France " dreamed at my right. I thought 
of Napoleon crossing the channel, a prisoner. And 
I thought of another sad exile whom the British 
have killed and whose grave is in Paris. 

Oscar Wilde rests not far from one whom Ger- 
many, to her shame, has rejected. Like him, a 
poet, brilliant and cynical. And, like him, the son 
of a race down-trodden and melancholy. I won- 
der if In desolate nights the ghost of Oscar Wilde 
holds concourse with Heinrlch Heine? And if 
the worm has not devastated their smile, they may 
even smile, seeing that both are revenged on their 
people. Bernard Shaw, the cynical voice of Wilde, 



8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

with none of Wilde's poetry, has turned England 
topsy-turvy; and Jungs tdeutschland has received 
from Heine his poison, but not his honey. 

And I thought of the Vikings who discovered 
the New World before the birth of Columbus. 
And of the Wars of the Roses. I thought of Swin- 
burne, the voice of the sea and of sin ; and of Dar- 
win and Goethe; of Maeterlinck and D'Annunzio. 
I thought of Jeanne d'Arc, who was burnt as a 
witch and is now a saint. And I thought of the 
Roman days. 

I thought of Csesar who had conquered Gaul, 
and of the Briton who conquered Caesar. I saw 
Plato with his noble, strangely Germanic visage, 
and Socrates with the face and the cheeks of the 
Slav. This was the land where Jupiter had loved 
Europa, and Prometheus had snatched the fateful 
fire! And in the far distance I almost felt the 
presence, stupendous and terrifying, of Asia, 
mother of continents, plagues and messiahs. 



CHAPTER II 

FIRST SHOCKS 

We In America make things most unpleasant 
for newcomers. We Inquire Into their solvency. 
We question their morals. And, naively enough, 
ask their political faith. Europe receives her 
visitors with the smile of a woman of culture. And 
beams her broadest smile upon us. The Old 
World regards us with a curious mixture of amuse- 
ment and awe. Much as the subtle-wltted Greek 
may have looked upon his Barbarian conqueror. 
They are afraid of us, but they refuse to take us 
seriously. Some one has compared Germany to 
Greece; we have been called the Rome of the 
Western World. In Germany to-day the spirit of 
Athens Is vibrant — there are some who say that 
Plato himself was a German. Our coarse-fibered 
strenuoslty relates us in many ways to the 
Romans. 

Like the Romans we lack ideals and ideas. Sub- 
tleties are beyond us. We have no sense of tra- 
dition and reverence. There are only three tra- 
ditions we cherish: the Monroe Doctrine, the 
Puritan Sabbath, and the absurd superstition that 

9 



lo CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

the White House should harbor no man for more 
than eight years. We adhere to these traditions 
with Antony's devotion to his matchless inamo- 
rata. We nurse them with the frantic affection 
of a grief-stricken Niobe. They are all we have. 
All else is chaos. 

Irreverence for old age is bred in our bones. 
We hate established things. Like children, we 
sometimes break our toys merely to break them. 
To feel that we can do things. The will to live is 
strong in us, but we express it crudely. Fre- 
quently, to use a Vergilian phrase, by " making a 
noise with our mouths." On Election Day and 
on the Fourth of July we are the noisiest two- 
legged animal. The rattlesnake, not the eagle, 
should be our national emblem. The League of 
Silence, consecrated to humanity by Mrs. Isaac L. 
Rice, and the " noiseless gun " invented by Hiram 
Maxim, are the two most auspicious events in the 
history of American culture. 

Quiet distinction is beyond us. We must shriek 
at the top of our voices. We have no manners. 
We lack urbanity. The little tug that takes you 
to shore in Hamburg is called " Welcome! '* And 
across the bow of the one that takes you back is 
written: ^^ Atif JViedersehen! '' No American 
brain could have conceived of this. It is too gra- 
cious and simple. We would christen the one, 
"Undesirable Immigrant;" and bestow upon the 
other the appellation " Avaunt ! " 



FIRST SHOCKS ii 

There Is a train that takes you to Hamburg 
from where you land. It is more comfortable 
than our parlor-cars. There are little compart- 
ments, each with doors and curtains. Drawing 
down these curtains, one may safely stretch one's 
limbs In the languid sleep of the wicked. If sleep 
has no allurements for us, we may yield to the 
blandishments of his brother Cupid. The Ger- 
man's coupe Is his castle. No Pullman porter's 
face emerging from the horizon like a great, black 
moon, will eclipse, even momentarily, your beau- 
tiful vis-a-vis, 

I received, however, two severe shocks on that 
trip. One, when the conductor on his circuit of 
Inspection demanded the visible evidence of my 
right to occupy the compartment. He spoke to 
mc tenderly, as a mother speaks to her nursling. 
My astonishment yielded to utter felicity — I 
gasped open-mouthed, when he actually lifted his 
cap to me. He saluted me ! He made me feel like 
a railroad president. Courtesy dwells in the bosom 
of the German railroad conductor. 

The second shock was no less severe. The 
Western lady with the two daughters, (the Hen), 
was the cause of my consternation. There was a 
man selling beer at the station. She almost gob- 
bled up his tray with her hungry eyes. But her 
tongue still refused to articulate the desire that 
had already subjected her conscience. For he who 
looks at a glass of Pilsener with an evil longing is 



12 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

no longer a teetotaler in his heart. At last, with 
a gesture of despair, she beckoned to him, glanc- 
ing guiltily at my countenance, then lit up with in- 
comprehensible glee. I am sure she felt horribly 
wicked. But the struggle between thirst and pro- 
priety had consumed several minutes. Precious 
minutes! By the time the man reappeared with 
his tray the train was already in motion. He 
slowly vanished from our field of vision, waving 
to us from afar his frantic regret, like the ghost 
of a sin we had not dared to commit. 

The sense of propriety, like the chameleon, 
changes with Its environment. Americans abroad 
are humanized for the time being. They dis- 
pense with convention; they breathe with a novel 
freedom. Our conventions don't fit us. They 
don't fit any man. We are glad to discard them. 
We leave them In cold storage in Hamburg or 
Bremen. We redeem them on our return. Once 
back in America we are very proper — Tartuffe 
when he goes to church. 

When you arrive in a European city the first 
thing you do Is to take a cab. It Is delightful and 
inexpensive. How different from when you land 
in New York! Abroad, if you think you are over- 
charged, you call a policeman. And you are safe. 
Alas I It is not so here. Recently a friend of mine, 
a young Hungarian poet, on his arrival hired a 
cab at a Hoboken ferry. His destination was 
Harlem. When the cabby finally mentioned his 



FIRST SHOCKS 13 

price, the bard insisted upon being driven back 
to Police Headquarters in Mulberry street. He 
came near being locked up. In the end he had to 
unburden his pocket of twenty-five dollars. For 
that price you can hire a cab for a week in 
Berlin. 

There is much to be said for the cab. Need I 
conjure up the delightful murders and mysterious 
elopements the novelist's imagination associates 
with this vehicle? Wherever the hansom monop- 
olizes traffic, life is wonderful and complex. It is 
an inducement to self-respect. It makes you feel 
like a millionaire. The swift revolution of the 
wheels annihilates distance, and creates class dis- 
tinction. I can afford to take a cab. My wash- 
erwoman cannot. That is, abroad. In this coun- 
try we would both travel by trolley, and I should 
have to give her my seat if the car were crowded. 
I don't want to hang on the same strap with my 
barber! Not that I am a snob. But the thing is 
impossible. 

Europe recognizes without much ado the bar- 
rier between us. America blatantly denies the 
ultimate lesson of evolution, the doctrine of dif- 
ferentiation. Here he and I are equals, unless my 
coffers overflow with iniquitous riches, and the 
smell of gasoline is sweet in my nostrils. Then, 
indeed, even Justice will incline her scale in my 
favor, and the magistrates of the police court, sit- 
ting in judgment over the quick, not the dead, will 



14 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

tenderly hail me by name when a blundering offi- 
cer of the law has again arrested my speed and 
my chauffeur. 

In Europe the barber will always remember his 
station. He will not forget it if we meet on the 
street. Decades may pass while he wields the 
razor; his shavings may amount to a pile: he will 
still be a menial. Of course the case is different 
if he suddenly develops a tenor voice. Then Eu- 
rope will carry him upon her shoulders. The 
bomb of genius breaks through the barrier of 
caste. But the day we erase from our cerebrum 
the absurd fallacy of equality we shall rejoin the 
choir of civilized nations. Inequality, differentia- 
tion — as Washington knew — is the essence of 
culture. 

On leaving the cab you tip the coachman; only 
a few pennies — he will salute you, and smile, and 
be happy. In America, where he is your equal, 
he will pocket your generous tip with a savage 
growl, as if you had tried to insult him. He will 
hardly say *' Thank you ! " In that respect he 
seems to have entered into a silent conspiracy with 
his cousin the barber, and his brother the waiter. 
When I give a tip abroad, I feel that the Record- 
ing Angel is entering the transaction on the credit 
side of my ledger. When I tip an American I 
feel I am being robbed. Wine turns to gall 
in my glass. I become a misanthrope and a 
miser. 



FIRST SHOCKS 15 

At the hotel you will probably order a meal. 
,You may not want a hearty meal. You may not 
feel like eating your way through a big table 
d'hote. So you order some Wiener Schnitzel, and 
Preisselbeeren, and some Moselle wine. The 
Preisselbeere, let me add, is the cranberry raised 
to the nth power. The waiter brings you the 
viands, not as if he were doing you a favor, but 
as if you were actually a person of consideration. 
Everything he brings you is toothsome. There is 
a delightful individuality about it all. 

Our lack of imagination is most obvious In our 
food. The art of dining expires upon the bosoms 
of our cooks. The intolerable monotony of the 
American menu merits a chapter in Dante's /«- 
ferno. We are invariably compelled to fall back 
upon the last resort of the unimaginative — steak. 
In Europe every restaurant has its specialties. Try 
the same dainty In two different ratskellers; you 
can tell blindfolded which is which. That 
is, if you are a gourmet. If you chew your 
food with your imagination, not alone with your 
teeth. 

Ah ! and the nice crisp rolls they have ! And for 
their rye bread I would sell my soul to the devil. 
You are about to regale yourself with the bread. 
Suddenly you miss something. *' Oberl '' you cry. 
That means Waiter Superior. Every German 
waiter Is called Herr Ober. That is a sop to Ger- 
man patriotism. It implies the excellence of the 



1 6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

German waiter. He is the Overman of waiter- 
dom. 

The Herr Oher appears anxiously scanning 
your face. " Where is the butter? " you ask. 
" Butter? The gentleman didn't order any." 

Yes ! You are actually expected to order your 
butter. And, what is more, the items will appear j 
on your check. In France they make you pay for ' 
your napkin. But at the final reckoning you find 
that you are saving a lot of money. In New 
York I pay for my modest needs at lunch almost a 
dollar. In Berlin I have had Backhaehndl, a, 
dream in chicken, delicious beyond words; inef- 
fable Preisselheeren; a cantata in whipped cream 
called strawberry bomb; and a jug of honest wine, 
all for one mark and twenty Pfennige, or about 
thirty cents. But I have to pay two cents for 
butter ! 

We Americans always expect something for - 
nothing. We are a nation of grafters. We have 
not yet mentally digested that the least is always , 
the most expensive. We pay most dearly for what \ 
costs us nothing. Besides, we are in the habit of 
continually wasting money by paying for things 
we don't want, or don't get, merely because others 
presumably want them and get them. We have 
an idea lodged somewhere in our cranium that 
money is easily made, because at the touch of some 
modern Midas watered stock turns to gold. Al- 
beit few of us are initiates in his secret, we are 



FIRST SHOCKS 17 

tempted to emulate the munificence of his house- 
hold. We live within his means, not ours. 

The average American, like the savage, makes 
no provision for the future. The mind of the 
twelve-dollar clerk, oblivious to the actual value 
of money, refuses to grasp that a dollar is the 
symbol of half a day's wearisome drudgery. And 
all sense of the significance of the individual green- 
back is lost in a roseate mist when his salary climbs 
up to the dazzling height of twenty-five per. We 
have yet to learn the rudimentary fact that the 
value of a coin fluctuates continually as It wanders 
from one man's hand to another's. We are, in 
consequence, the most wasteful of nations. Waste- 
ful of nerve-juice and sweat, equally wasteful of 
forests and nature's multiple bounties. Far from 
being a business-like people, we wallow like hogs 
in our transient abundance. 

Here Is waste everywhere. In the Berlin sub- 
way — to instance a significant Illustration of munici- 
pal economy — every man Is his own conductor. 
This I suspect to be a devious method on the part 
of the State to cultivate In Its subjects the military 
virtue of self-reliance. In American cities, the con- 
ductor sneezes, coughs, or makes some other Inar- 
ticulate sound when the train approaches the sta- 
tion. To Interpret these catarrhal noises in intel- 
ligible terms well-nigh exhausts the Imagination. 
There are no plainly marked stations as In Berlin ; 
and who would dare address a conductor? His 



1 8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

primary function, apparently, is to impress upon 
us in uncouth colloquial gabble the urgency of dis- 
patch. Sometimes he jabs us. 

On the subway trains of the German metrop- 
olis there are no conductors, — neither is there dan- 
ger to life and limb. There is no obscene crowd- 
ing, there is no strap-hanging — modern substitutes 
for mediaeval institutions of torture. When a car 
is filled to its capacity no avaricious syndicate at- 
tempts to disprove the truth still maintained by the 
physicists that two bodies cannot occupy the same 
space at the same time. 

Well may a sense of personal grievance intrude 
upon the calmness of my philosophic reflection: 
the New York subway system has snatched from 
me, (at Ninety-sixth Street), the best-beloved of 
sweethearts! How well I remember the tragic 
occurrence ! Fate has engraved each detail on my 
brain with her indelible pencil! A sea of human 
agony pressed upon us from all sides. Suddenly 
she was gone ! One last glimpse of her beckoning 
hands! One last swish of departing silks! A 
muffled cry, — I cannot explain it, being neither H. 
G. Wells, nor Jules Verne, — and the hungry jaws 
of incomprehensible void had closed upon her. 
She had actually been crushed out of known space, 
and disappeared into the fourth dimension. 
Now, in Berlin, the police would not per- 
mit such a thing to happen, because " it is strength- 
ily undersaid " to leave the platform without 



FIRST SHOCKS 19 

having delivered one's ticket to the Cerberus at 
the gate. 

We are wastrels of time in bar-room and club, 
but we risk our lives to save a minute in locomo- 
tion. The German law, unlike our own, does not 
regard suicide as a punishable offense, but at least 
it saves you, even against yourself, from being 
murdered — by inches — in a crowded car. How- 
ever annoying it may be to be compelled to wait 
until the next train rolls leisurely into the station, 
salntship does thereby hold out Its crown to you: 
you may practise the Christian virtue of patience. 
Your misery, moreover, is not uncompanioned. 
But if you are in a hurry a second-class compart- 
ment will hospitably receive you on payment of an 
additional obolus. Mortals less fortunate travel 
third. The system comprising two classes, even 
in city traffic, is an excellent thing, excellent from 
your point of view, commendable also from the 
point of view of your financial inferior, to whom 
plush seats are not indispensable. 

The democratic delusion of equality and mob- 
rule has not yet addled the brains of Europe. 
Abroad even the Socialist is not convinced in his 
heart that " all men are created free and equal.** 
But people respect your personality and your com- 
fort. They do not ask you to twist your body, 
made in the image of God, into ludicrous shapes 
as you hang to a strap. But they boldly affirm the 
rights of man — as distinguished from woman. I 



20 CONFESSIONS OF A ,BARBARIAN 

devoutly believe In the rights of woman. I even 
uphold universal suffrage, Irrespective of the vul- 
gar distinction of either age or sex, limited merely 
by a severe educational test. I believe In votes for 
children as well as for women, provided they have 
the brains. But I vigorously resent the monstrous 
attempt of the American female to usurp man's 
rights without man's duties, without, moreover, 
relinquishing her prerogatives as a woman. In 
Berlin every car has a special compartment for 
smokers. We refuse to grant to the male that 
last refuge, but, absurdly enough, Institute special 
cars for the ladles — a startling flashlight Into the 
feminine character of our vaunted American 
" civilization." 

We fondly Imagine that we are a practical peo- 
ple. We Invent time- and labor-saving machines. 
Our ingenuity, however, deserts us when It comes 
to making life more pleasant. We should all like 
to live In houses with elevators, but Insolvency 
stands at the gate like an Irate angel. The ordi- 
nary elevator is a monstrous thing, devouring 
space and service. But the wizards of Berlin have 
installed in dwellings hardly larger than a Nu- 
remberg toy house, lUlIputlan lifts commensurate 
with their size. Electricity ingeniously applied 
supplants the attendant. A good fairy disguised 
as the landlady presents every tenant with a 
magic key. When it is slipped into the keyhole 
the elevator promptly answers your summons. The 



FIRST SHOCKS 21 

door swings open to welcome you, and the moment 
you step on the mat within, a cunning device turns 
on the electric light. The brain-endowed elevator 
halts at your floor; you close a partition, and — 
presto I — down It goes of its own accord. 

Profiting by the mishap of the hero of the 
Arabian Nights, the municipality subjects you to 
an examination of your ability to pronounce the 
magical Sesame before the key is entrusted into 
your keeping. But the whole affair is so simple 
and so safe that a child can learn it all without 
special instruction. Rents are high in Berlin, 
comparatively speaking, but many people can af- 
ford to live in elevator houses over there, who 
wouldn't dream of It here. And yet I feel sure 
that in our city houses, honeycombed with apart- 
ments, thousands of women are annually crippled 
or killed by climbing too many stairs. 

There are few things beyond our reach if we 
are determined to get them. But where shall we 
look for guidance? Our instincts are wavering 
and vulgar. We are the parvenu among nations. 
Our children's children may, perhaps, acquire 
reverence, refinement and polish. But there are 
things one can only Inherit. The atmosphere of a 
place cannot be bartered for so many pieces of 
silver. We can purchase with our gold pigeons 
of the color of grapes, and of the color of slate- 
quarries. We can pauperize them as we pauper- 
ize the squirrel. We can make them docile, until 



22 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

they nestle upon the palm of our hand. But we 
cannot duplicate the Place of St. Mark in Venice. 

Esthetic values are connotative. There is a 
picturesqueness in Europe that one looks for in 
vain in a newly-made country. Take the lovely 
swans on the Alster in Hamburg. How lordly 
they circle upon the river, fed by delicate Ledas 
from the casements of restaurants by the water. 
And in winter the seagulls are there. Myriads 
and myriads of them. And there is an old man 
who makes his living by selling fish to feed them. 
You cannot help thinking of Heine watching the 
birds and perchance writing a melancholy sonnet 
about them. This is the city where he felt most 
at home. It is strange that he should never have 
sung of its loveliest aspect. 

But the weirdest thing in Hamburg is its won- 
derful mists. They rise from the ground like a 
thin veil until they swallow the city — Rathaus, 
Alster and all. I had a curious thrill watching 
a group of children playing on the lawn while 
slowly, with mist-embroidered wings, the after- 
noon faded into the dusk. At first the milk-white 
veil barely touched their feet. They were like 
angel-boys in some Raphael painting, dancing on 
clouds at the knees of God. When I looked again, 
the chining breath of the fog had enveloped them, 
as the Erl-King in Goethe's ballad envelops the 
dying lad. Higher and higher rose the white 
doom. At last I could only faintly distinguish 



FIRST SHOCKS 23 

their figures : they seemed like children frolicking in 
blissful unconsciousness at the bottom of the sea. 
Then they disappeared altogether. 

They must have caught cold. I am sure the fog 
is unhealthy. But beauty is apt to be. 



CHAPTER III 

THE STATE IDEA 

We have compared ourselves to the Romans. 
I, myself, have endorsed that comparison. But 
I am afraid we flatter ourselves. We are unde- 
niably resourceful and mighty. Our dominion Is 
wider than Rome's. We can match the Appian 
Way. We even have a sort of Caesar. That Is 
what the French call him, and not without jus- 
tice. Caesar was Rome. America, through Eu- 
rope's glasses, Is Roosevelt. We^ recognizing 
the real master in his dual disguise, bow to 
Rockefeller and Morgan. On the Continent 
Rockefeller's memoirs met with scant success. 
Roosevelt's books went. 

Like Caesar, Roosevelt is a historian. The fu- 
ture will speak of both as popular leaders. Greek 
students will perhaps employ the Greek equivalent 
of the term. Perhaps every statesman must be a 
demagogue. And every prophet a charlatan. 
Theodore, like the great Julius, Is intensely the- 
atrical, and Intensely — convulsively — dynamic. 
Both men believed in their star. Both men, after 
startling domestic exploits, submerged themselves 

24 



THE STATE IDEA 25 

temporarily In the African jungle. Roosevelt, 
like Caesar, has hunted big game. But not as big 
as Caesar's. He has founded no kingdom by the 
Nile; nor followed the river to its mystical 
sources. And there was no Cleopatra. That 
would take more imagination than Mr. Roose- 
velt possesses. He has slain lions, instead, and 
penned laborious articles, at a dollar a word, for 
the Outlook and Scribne/s. 

Intangible values are beyond us all. That is 
why we adore Individuals, not ideas. We worship 
Roosevelt. But detest " My policies.'' The in- 
visible world is not for us. We have no use for 
abstract ideals. That Is where the Barbarian pops 
up. We might well learn a lesson from the scroll 
of the Jews. They have been loyal for four 
thousand years to an imaginary kingdom. Per- 
haps their children will bequeath to America, in 
token of gratitude, the fine idealism that still, at 
least In prayer, turns their eyes to Jerusalem. Un- 
til that spirit shall have Impregnated our system, 
we shall be inferior to Rome. 

The Romans, too, were a practical people. But 
the Roman brain conceived of at least one great 
abstraction: the State Idea — Rome's greatest be- 
quest to the world. The Roman law is only its 
offspring. The State was even greater than 
Caesar. He was great, and his successors were 
great by identifying themselves with this Idea. 
The majesty of the Emperor is the majesty of the 



26 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

State. An insult to him Is an insult to all. Hence 
lese majeste. Every Roman owed allegiance to 
this abstraction. The moment we believe in an ab- 
straction, we project it into reality. '^ Civis 
Romanus sum '^ was the most tangible thing in 
Roman civilization. 

We remember our citizenship only in trouble — 
when weVe made fools of ourselves abroad. We, 
too, no doubt have public-spirited men. We are 
more generous than Europe. We give billions 
to libraries. To universities. Churches. Hos- 
pitals. But not, willingly, one cent to the State. 
Who ever dreams of paying the public debt? On 
the contrary. We don't mind " doing " the State. 
We swear off taxes. We perjure ourselves at the 
Custom House. In our heart of hearts, we ap- 
prove of illicit rebates. We attach no blame to 
municipal thievery. We wouldn't abstract a 
penny from another man's pocketbook. But we'd 
all like to take millions out of the State's. The 
State Idea eludes our brains. We are shamed 
by the beehive. Vainly have we watched with un- 
intelligent eyes, from the day that we swung in 
the trees by our tails, the government of the ant- 
hill. 

Where the State Idea crystallizes in the execu- 
tive function, we actually fear it. A great na- 
tional party opposes every extension of federal 
power. Our Constitution decentralizes the gov- 
ernment. We resent its tangible presence. Even 



THE STATE IDEA 27 

benevolent state compulsion revolts us. That is 
one reason why we oppose direct taxation. We 
prefer to pay twice the amount Indirectly. For the 
same reason we shall never be Socialists. The 
scarlet flower of Socialism thrives only upon the 
soil of the State Idea. We are, most of us, un- 
conscious anarchs. We believe in the greatest in- 
dividual freedom, in universal laissez faire, — ex- 
cept where it is absolutely defensible : in the sphere 
of sex and individual morals. 

Abroad there is a greater laxity in these mat- 
ters. But rigorous laws regulate everything else. 
The very rigor of the law makes for greater free- 
dom. A distinct line exists between the permis- 
sible and the unlawful. Here we are all at sea. 
There are so many contradictory laws that no man 
knows where he stands. The execution of the law 
is left to individual caprice. Much depends on 
the temper of the District Attorney and the state 
of judicial livers. 

If all the laws on our statute books were car- 
ried out for a single day, the land would be de- 
populated. We would all be in jail. Abroad I 
know that the State will make me do certain things. 
But I may sleep peacefully at night. I need not 
fear to wake up a convict. There are no legal pit- 
falls. Here all is uncertain. We all walk on 
quicksands. 

The moment you enter your hotel abroad, the 
paw of the State is raised. The hotel clerk, trans- 



28 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

formed for the nonce into the Instrument of a 
sovereign power, with gesture grand presents you 
with an ominous slip. Lots of questions are 
printed on It. It's a sort of examination sheet. 
Where do you come from? What do you want? 
What's your business? How old are you? And 
what's your religion? My traveling companions 
were furious at this In Hamburg, and almost 
speechless in Berlin. The City of Berlin followed 
them argus-eyed to their private lodgings. Fail- 
ure to report their presence, we learned, would 
have subjected the landlady to a fine. Before 
twice twenty-four hours had elapsed inspectors 
would have been hot upon their trail. 

One young man wanted to leave for home at 
once, or, as Schiller would say, " to behold Ger- 
many with his back." He had been requested to 
present himself personally to the police. So far 
as I know, there was nothing against him. He is 
nice, clean, upright; quite a likable chap. I know 
— I ought to ; for, to tell the truth, that young man 
was me. I am fully aware that this Is bad gram- 
mar; but in moments of extreme suspense the 
elegancies of diction desert us. 

Resistance being futile, I obeyed the summons. 
But my feet became frigid. My heart *' fell Into 
my trousers" — that is how the Germans phrase it. 
Not that I was conscious of any crime. But you 
can never tell! There are so many laws. And 
alone! In a foreign land! The police inspector 



THE STATE IDEA 29 

looked me over, not unkindly. He asked a few 
questions. He nodded. And all was over. My 
landlady was surprised to see me come back. It 
was so obvious that I felt hurt. I am sure she had 
taken me for at least a murderer, or the fugitive 
second vice president of some financial concern. 

I had brought the trouble upon my own head 
by designating myself as a *' Fire-worshiper." I 
had in mind, no doubt, the Divine Fire; but in 
Germany fire worship is not recognized by the 
State. With reluctant hand, I substituted the 
legally accepted term — " Lutheran " — for my fiery 
Credo. 

One of my fellow-passengers had a harder time 
of It than I — the lady with the pathetic eyes. I 
knew misfortune was flapping its somber wings 
over her head. She had registered as a Quaker. 
The policeman thought she was jesting unduly: in 
German the word is the onomatopoeia for the 
musical sounds that rise with reiterative insistence 
on moonlit nights from the frog pond. Unfortu- 
nately neither understood the language of the 
other. The poor girl was terribly frightened when 
the bluecoat threatened to arrest her for insulting 
an officer, an instrument of the State. 

I regarded the situation with philosophic com- 
posure. The troubles of others leave us extra- 
ordinarily calm. Finally my good nature pre- 
vailed. The girl's friends were angry with the 
German Empire, until the joke dawned upon them. 



30 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

It never dawned upon her. The deeper signifi- 
cance of the incident had, however, impressed it- 
self upon me. I no longer resented the solicitude 
of the government. Far from it: I felt pleased, 
touched, elated, moved to tears, yes — and flattered, 
that the German Empire and the City of Berlin 
should be so anxious about me. 

There was something personal in this Interest. 
It was cordial. I felt Germania had taken us to 
her ample bosom. She protected us. We had be- 
come members of her imperial household. Her 
concern in us was benign. Her questions were the 
natural curiosity of a friend. Our names are now 
filed at police headquarters. If we get into 
trouble, they'll make a cross against our names. 
They keep tab on our movements. 

I admit that powerful arguments may be ad- 
vanced against the system from the point of view 
of the thug. However, every net has its meshes. 
Criminals have escaped even from Moablt. The 
escapades of the Hauptmann of Kopenik have 
split the sides of the world with laughter. But the 
Black Hand will never make its headquarters in 
Berlin. No Mafia will there raise its head; no 
band of ruffians establish a reign of terror. 

The German registry system prevails in most 
continental cities. It is annoying until you grasp 
it. Ultimately you walk about with a new sense 
of security. The European merchant princes need 
never pillow their calculating heads above a loaded 



THE STATE IDEA 31 

revolver. The forces of the State are arrayed to 
protect them. It's all the difference between 
civilization and barbarism. I thought of it when 
I saw An Englishman's Home, — in the scene 
where the invading army first enters the house, and 
Mr. Brown, the landlord, angrily calls : *' Police I " 
Ridiculous? Yes. But also sublime. 

Everywhere Is the eye of that big abstraction, 
the State. It is obeyed even when its vigilance re- 
laxes. I have said that the subway trains had sec- 
ond- and third-class compartments. The tickets 
are differently colored. But there is hardly any 
control once you are on the platform. At first I 
felt tempted to enter a second-class compartment 
with a third-class ticket. We are accustomed to 
countenance breaches of the eighth command- 
ment, except In personal business transactions. 
Let not the Gibson- and the Christy-Girls elevate 
their haughty brows. They are hardened offend- 
ers. A corporation isn't a person. So we don't 
feel bound to be honest with It. Now, In Germany 
you'd be regarded as a common thief if you omit- 
ted to pay your fare. Honesty there Is not virtue, 
but habit. Obedience to law is second nature. 
Factory owners, strange to say, are habitually care- 
ful of human life. We have not outgrown the 
heathen idea that so many pieces of silver atone 
for a human life. We find murder cheaper than 
caution. 

Abroad regulations are stringent. But the 



32 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

State threatens no one with a year's Imprisonment 
and a fine of five hundred dollars for trivial of- 
fenses. In the state of New York, by a curious 
freak of statute, the penalty for adultery Is half 
that for spitting In a street-car. Obviously, spit- 
ting Is more tempting to the average American 
than the allurements of Venus. In Europe adul- 
tery Is a pleasant diversion. No gentleman, how- 
ever, expectorates In the street. The severity of 
the law is reserved for Important transgressions. 

The Tentacle of the Octopus, the youthful hire- 
ling of the Standard Oil, recalled my attention to 
certain significant facts. The columns of smoke 
writhing like graceful serpents out of factory 
chimneys are indeed poison-fanged adders. 
Death lurks In the breath of their nostrils. " At 
home," the youth confided to me, " I don't care 
what becomes of the chemicals that escape with 
the smoke. In Austria, where I am going to 
found a plant, we are compelled to convert them 
into Innocuous vapors.'' 

The Tentacle wriggled with wrath. 

" May not the vapors be turned Into useful by- 
products?" I asked. "Man extracts gold from 
water. Can he wrest no treasure from smoke?'* 

** Certainly," he replied, with a contemptuous 
shrug. '' But we don't bother about it. We don't 
think there's enough In it." 

The benefit to the community would be Incal- 
culable. Children's lungs would no longer be filled 



THE STATE IDEA 33 

with corruption. But the benefit to him as an In- 
dividual and to the corporation as such was too 
small. So he swallowed his share of the poison 
with Socratic composure. We are all free and 
equal to swallow it. 

We'd move heaven and earth to help a cripple. 
We'd all chip in for a hungry child. But we don't 
mind poisoning hundreds and thousands of chil- 
dren daily and hourly. Children in the abstract 
fail to move us to pity. We are a nation of Her- 
ods. But Herod had reason for slaying the little 
ones. And he slew them mercifully and quickly. 
We have divers methods of murder. 

Our favorite mode of infanticide is asphyxia- 
tion. We take air and light from our babies till 
they languish like starved little plants. Economy 
is commendable. The Germans are thrifty enough. 
But they will not let sky-scrapers blot out the sun. 
The height of a house must be proportionate to 
the width of the street. They go even further 
than that. In certain residential sections you are 
not permitted to put up a house at all unless you 
follow a prescribed architectural style. Art for 
once wields a bludgeon, exacting subservience to an 
aesthetic abstraction. She harmonizes individual 
eccentricities. In Europe each town is an entity: 
our municipalities are jumbles of iron and stone 
gazing squint-eyed at heaven. 

If the State fathers Its subjects, the community 
mothers them. One city, Schoeneberg-by-Berlin, 



34 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

has entered Into a secret compact with Herr 
Stork. Every stork in Schoeneberg drops a 
bank-book on the window-sill when it does its duty. 
The city presents every baby with a bank account 
— not a fat one, to be sure. Only one mark, bear- 
ing interest at four per cent. But it is supposed to 
grow nice and fat with the baby. If you happen 
to be a million-dollar baby anyway, you are twenty- 
five cents more to the good. If you are not, your^ 
wee little foot is placed at least on the first rung of 
the ladder of high finance. 

Where happiness reigns, health is the twin of 
wealth. The circulation of the blood is more im- 
portant than the circulation of money. The State 
paternally enforces its sanitary demands. If dis- 
ease eats your marrow, the forbidding countenance 
of the State assumes the benignant smile of a Good 
Samaritan. When old age has weakened your 
limbs, the inexorable gatherer of taxes will replen- 
ish your pockets. The United States, in a similar 
predicament, conjures up the specter of national 
bankruptcy. We are too poor to be humane. We 
must spend half of our national income on battle- 
ships. What would we say to a boy who invested 
half his lunch-money in boxing-gloves? We would 
actually rather deal death to others than make 
living more pleasant for ourselves. England's 
bill for Dreadnoughts is even greater than ours. 
Nevertheless, she has her old-age pensions. Ger- 
many has a wonderful system of compulsory in- 



THE STATE IDEA 35 

surance. If the German owes service to the State, 
he, in turn, is not unrewarded. The State owes 
him some compensation — some kind of decent old 
age. 

I may not have gotten my figures right, and 
my dates may be inexact, but the idea Is this. If 
you mak^ less than two thousand marks a year, 
you are compelled to provide through insurance 
against the three-headed monster — accident, age, 
and disease. Your employer pays one-half of the 
expense. You pay the other half. When you are 
old and cannot work any more, you get your pen- 
sion. The State sees to that. The State presents 
you with an additional annual bonus of fifty marks. 
This payment, insufficient in itself, establishes the 
principle of reciprocal obligation between the na- 
tion and you. 

If you work in an industrial concern where 
there is some danger, and your annual income is 
less than three thousand marks, your employer 
must pay the premium on your accident policy. 
Suppose you work in a factory where you have 
been earning twelve hundred marks, and you are 
hurt. At once the State comes to your rescue. A 
respectable hospital opens its doors to you. Your 
family receives financial assistance. If you are 
totally disabled, an annual pension of eight or nine 
hundred marks assures your daily subsistence. 
And if you should die, your widow will receive 
a pension of over six hundred marks for the 



36 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

remainder of her natural life. If she decides 
to marry again, the State cheerfully presents her 
with a substantial bonus, and still contributes to 
the expense of educating your children. You don't 
have to sue anybody to get your money. You 
don't have to accept a meager settlement and di- 
vide with a rascally lawyer. And whether you 
want It or not, you are Insured. You have nothing 
to say in the matter. Neither has your boss. Prob- 
ably your wages will suffer a little, but at least 
you are safe from the poorhouse. With all her 
military enthusiasm, Germany is not unmindful of 
her soldiers of peace, the veterans of her Indus- 
trial army. 

We do not even pension our officials. Recently 
the secretary of one of our embassies retired from 
public life. He had served his country I do not 
know how many years. The snows of seven de- 
cades had fallen on his hair. His back was bent, 
his strength exhausted. Yet he would have been 
exposed to actual want if a group of prosperous 
financiers had not discharged from their private 
fortunes the indebtedness of the Commonwealth. 
We love to brag of our generosity. But we are 
niggardly as a nation. We underpay our public 
servants In office, and out of office we starve them. 
We subject our ambassadors to humiliation in for- 
eign capitals. We pay starvation wages to our 
Secretary of State; and force our ex-presidents to 
seek refuge In Africa or the almshouse. 



CHAPTER IV 



" s. m/' 



" S. M/' IS written across the map of Europe. 
It flares from the century's forehead. It is a magic 
key to the German heart. S. M.— Seine Majes- 
tdt — is the vernacular for the Kaiser. 

S. M. is a wonderful person. He pervades all 
Germany. He is everywhere. He is a great man 
— perhaps the greatest contemporaneous figure. 
Surely the greatest riddle. 

Men, I have said, are ideas incarnate. And be- 
sides our natural parents, we have spiritual pro- 
genitors to whom we are born in mystical mar- 
riage. Strange bedfellows breed strange off- 
spring. The fruit of the marriage between Faust 
and Helen was Euphorion, a spirit of unstable and 
rarefied composition. When the Twentieth Cen- 
tury wedded the Middle Ages, William II flashed 
into life. Euphorion was not of the earth; in 
him antagonistic elements were but imperfectly 
blended. William II is cast in enduring mould; a 
felicitous force has clinched the diverse meaning 
of two inimical epochs in the brilliant paradox of 
his being. 

37 



38 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

Logic, unaided, cannot fathom the mystery of 
William II. I have always worshiped the 
Sphinx. I even had a liaison with it once. Then 
I thought I understood it. I didn't. But It Is 
easier to understand than the Kaiser. Woman Is 
an open book as compared with him. And it really 
isn't difficult for the Sphinx to be mysterious. Its 
greatest mystery is its silence. But the Kaiser isn't 
silent. He makes speeches — many of them. We 
may interview, snapshot, and paint him: he still 
leaves us puzzled. 

William II reconciles In his person the most 
Incongruous traits. He Is the most impulsive of 
reigning monarchs. There can be no doubt about 
that. Yet he Is almost Machiavellian in premedi- 
tation. That telegram to Kruger was impulsive — 
and yet how carefully calculated! And prepared 
at the Foreign Office ! Shrewd observers say that 
the historical Interview In the Daily Telegraph 
had been no less carefully launched. And that the 
hubbub attendant upon its publication furthered 
some far-seeing plan. 

At the time, it will be remembered, a cyclone 
broke loose in German editorial Ink-pots. And, 
behold! William, the Imperious, humbly bowed 
his head. Perhaps he smiled to himself somewhat 
sadly. But he said nothing. Simplicissimus, In 
one of Its cartoons, replaced the Imperial eagle 
over the entrance to the Foreign Office by another 
bird, not famed for discretion. And then, one 



"S. m;' 39 

morning, through a miracle of sudden enlighten- 
ment, the German people perceived with a gasp 
that the greatest defeats of the Kaiser were vic- 
tories In disguise. 

And yet the Kaiser is not a hypocrite. He is 
temperamentally incapable of deceit. But there Is 
no explanation. We must simply accept him as 
two distinct personalities. He Is monarchical to the 
bone. Yet It was he who opposed Bismarck's anti- 
Socialist legislation. He Is the official head of the 
Protestant church In Prussia, yet Roman ritual and 
Rome possesses for him a strange fascination. 
He loves pomp, but his children are reared with 
bourgeois simplicity. His preoccupation is war; 
he, nevertheless, is the stanchest champion of 
peace. He hates the English, and he loves the 
English. He Is a mystic and a rationalist. His 
inclinations are mediaeval, but he Is more inti- 
mately familiar with the technical intricacies of a 
modern gunboat than are his own engineers. He 
would be capable of restoring an ancient castle, 
famed of minnesingers, and of establishing wire- 
less telephony on Its ramparts. He is the only man 
who could do this without being absurd, because 
he is, as I have asserted, the sole legitimate off- 
spring of Romanticism and Modernity. 

Of his two natures, one belongs to the Twenti- 
eth Century, one to the Middle Ages. One is des- 
potic, one democratic. One hates the English, one 
loves them. One talks freely, — perhaps too freely; 



40 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

one is silent as the sepulcher. The Inquisition It- 
self was not more secretive. Peace lights on his 
right, hounds of war are leashed to his left. There 
are two Kaisers, both of whom labor for the bene- 
fit of the realm, each In his separate way. 

By this duality William II is the authen- 
tic exponent of modern Europe. In Europe to- 
day the war between Science and Faith wages 
more fiercely than ever. The wolf of Modernism 
has invaded even the fold of St. Peter. The lives 
of most Europeans are absurd because they have 
not yet found the equation between the Old and 
the New. Faith and Science live unreconciled, 
in one bosom, like two inimical brothers. Even 
we who are a century behind European thought 
begin to vibrate with the conflict. Perhaps Pro- 
fessor James is the prophet who shall lead us out 
of the wilderness. 

A parallel problem is presented In Europe by 
the incessant conflict between the monarchical idea 
and republicanism. Mediaeval institutions co- 
exist with democratic Institutions. It seems pre- 
posterous that people who can think for them- 
selves should not also govern themselves. Yet no 
small part of the strength of Europe roots In the 
mediaeval. Something of this struggle, modified 
by our environment. Is going on in America. The 
government in Washington steadily tightens its 
grip, while the steer of democracy raises Its omi- 
nous horns. 



" S. M." 41 

We live in a curiously transitional period. 
Probably authentic democracy lies at the end of 
the road. I should prefer some transfigured 
aristocracy. The greatest individual development 
is perhaps possible under a cultured tyrant. He is 
the man of destiny. His brain is the scroll of the 
Zeitgeist. 

Most modern monarchs compromise either too 
much or too little. Great Britain having disposed 
of the only logical basis of royalty, the divine 
right of kings, her ruler exercises primarily an 
ornamental, aesthetic function. The Tsar, on the 
other hand, entrenched behind prejudice and tra- 
dition, lives in constant dread of nitro-glycerine 
protests. The problem facing the world to-day is 
the readjustment between the passing order and 
the new order. The mental unrest has invaded 
even Asia Minor. When Abdul Hamid vainly 
tortured his wits for a solution to the question 
vexing the world, the monster. Sphinx-like, hurled 
him into the abyss. 

The giant Modernity everywhere shakes his 
fist against the lavendered glory of mediaeval tra- 
dition, impotent to obliterate its immemorial 
traces. William II is the living incarnation of this 
great contradiction. He is logical, because he is 
illogical. He is the only logical monarch in Eu- 
rope. He is an ideal Kaiser. He is in tune with 
the Zeitgeist. If Germany were to be declared a 
republic to-day, and a president had to be chosen, 



42 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

the unanimous choice of the people would be 
William II. 

America could never have produced William 
II. We lack the glamor of the Middle Ages. We 
have inherited only their shadows — their intoler- 
ance of the flesh and their hatred of beauty. Not 
ours the halo of tradition. We have sometimes 
compared the Kaiser to Roosevelt. I, myself, am 
an admirer of Roosevelt. But to liken him to the 
Kaiser is like comparing a phonograph to a night- 
ingale. It may imitate the nightingale bravely, 
but there is something missing. No mechanical 
ingenuity can conceal its absence. There must be 
some secret property defying investigation, like 
the timbre of an old instrument — perhaps some 
quality of the blood. 

I wonder if the blood of kings Is really like 
other men's? What a pity no one took the trouble 
to examine the blood of Louis Capet when he 
parted company with his head I Perhaps it was not 
blue, after all. We would need a psychic micro- 
scope to discover the truth. We know that a king's 
head may be wrung like a carl's. Even Imperial 
legs grow heavy with gout. And the abdomen is 
dreadfully democratic. As Nietzsche says, it al- 
ways reminds us that we are human. But the 
brain, ah ! that is different. Not anatomically. A 
woman's brain Is almost as large as a man's. And 
wasn't it Lombroso who couldn't tell, on one occa- 
sion, the brain of a genius from that of an idiot? 



" s. m;' 43 

But there is something else. There must be. It 
lurks in the brain-cells. Some memory — the real 
self. A brain where the notion of the divine 
right of monarchs has been rooting for genera- 
tions must be different from the brains of 
other men. 

No mean man, it is said, has ever been Presi- 
dent. The majesty of the office is such that, like 
Christ, it heals the leper. Even a confirmed klep- 
tomaniac will renounce his nefarious habits when 
fate has made him lord of the White House. Yet 
the President's reign is brief. He is often elected 
by doubtful methods. The King receives his 
crown out of the hand of God. It has descended 
to him from his sires. It will pass from him to 
his sons. He is porphyrogene. He rules not for 
a period of years, but forever. The King cannot 
die. In the animal kingdom, the insignia of roy- 
alty are corporeal. The queen-bee differs from her 
hive in appearance. Human distinctions are 
subtler, but no less real. Any young bee may, if 
sufficiently fed, develop into a queen. Generations 
of careful selection are needed to evolve a ruler 
of men. The king, of necessity, differs from his 
people. The process of evolution has endowed 
him with peculiar functions for the business of 
kingship. This heritage alone would have 
stamped William II as a remarkable ruler. But 
he is also a genius. 

" William II,'' one of his intimate friends Im- 



44 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

pressed upon me with conviction, " would have 
been conspicuous in any profession. If a cobbler, 
he would have been a master cobbler." He is 
versatile, myrlad-mlnded — strategist, poet, musi- 
cian, diplomatist, huntsman, painter and engineer. 
Nero tried his hand at some of these things. But 
it cost him his head. Frederick the Great dabbled 
in verse. But it was wretched verse. The Kaiser's 
endeavors in manifold fields would have made sev- 
eral reputations for men of lesser caliber. But 
he still remains, above all, the Kaiser. 

The Prussia of Frederick the Great was less 
Isolated than the German Empire In certain crit- 
ical periods under the present regime. To-day 
she plays the leading fiddle In the Concert of Pow- 
ers. The luminous figure of William II domi- 
nates the earth. The shadow of his sword para- 
lyzes the British Hon. But, unlike Frederick the 
Great, William the Great has accomplished his 
victories without bloodshed. For one and twenty 
years he has been Lord of Peace. The Seven 
Years' War was surely a wonderful thing. But 
what shall we say to a three times Seven Years' 
Peace? 

Germany is divided into two camps: those who 
follow the Kaiser blindly, and those who oppose 
him blindly. There is no neutral ground. I have 
a sneaking suspicion that even the Socialists se- 
cretly adore William II. If Bebel were the Chief 
Executive of a German Democracy, he would 



" s. m;' 45 

make the Kaiser his Chancellor. Even the Oppo- 
sition draws its life from the negation of him. 

The Kaiser's personal charm is more potent 
than that of Circe. Unlike Circe, he turns his ad- 
mirers not into swine, but into patriots. Like 
Julius Cassar, William II can be all things to all 
men. .He is a brilliant conversationalist, and as 
he listens to you he seems to enter into your mind. 
Yet all the while, his mind is a garrisoned fort- 
ress. The portals are closely guarded. Never 
a word passes his lips unchallenged. Caution is 
posted on the tip of his tongue. That, I believe, 
is the secret of rulers of men. 

It is almost incredible what sacrifices Germans, 
hard men of business, will make for one smile from 
his imperial lips. There is August Scherl, the Ger- 
man newspaper king. Mr. Scherl controls the 
syndicate publishing the Berlin Lokalanzeiger. 
Formerly this sheet might have been designated 
as ultra-yellow. Suddenly Mr. Scherl reverses 
his policy, and deliberately makes his paper, 
politically, the dullest in Berlin. The whisper had 
reached his ear that the Emperor read it: let no 
offensive opinion provoke a wrinkle on His 
Majesty's forehead! The circulation, however, 
continued to soar. Suppressing its yawns, Berlin 
still religiously peruses the Lokalanzeiger^ s cas- 
trated pages. " You see," the German explains, 
half apologetically, half with the pardonable 
pride of sharing, in a sense, the mental pabulum 



46 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

of his ruler, " S. M. reads it; I. M. {Ihre 
Majestdt, Her Majesty), also." 

And yet It is all a myth. Far be It from me to 
affirm that the Kaiser never reads the Lokalan- 
zeiger. He Is indeed an omnivorous reader. All 
the new magazines find their way to his table. His 
desk Is strewn with a bewildering variety of pub- 
lications. Sometimes, no doubt, he even sees 
August Bebel's radical mouthpiece, the Forwdrts. 
It is all nonsense, of course, that his news-dis- 
patches are "doctored." William II would brook 
no such interference. He picks up Information 
wherever he likes. But being a busy man, he has 
his news " romeiked," to employ a new verb, 
coined, I believe, by Richard Le Gallienne. The 
JVilhelmstrasse supplies him regularly with clip- 
pings on every imaginable topic of Interest. And 
finally the Fiirstenkorrespondenz, a sort of Liter- 
ary Digest for Princes, supplies him with the 
epitome of the daily news and excerpts from edi- 
torials. I do not think, however, that he lets that 
brilliant but venomous reptile, the Zukunft, coil 
up on his desk. 

The mention of Maximilian Harden's unmen- 
tionable magazine recalls to my mind one of the 
blackest chapters in the history of the German 
people. Harden's one object in life has been to 
play the advocatus diaboli to William II. At the 
time of the Eulenburg scandal and subsequently, 
when the Kaiser's Anglophile Interview exploded 



" S. M." 47 

with bomb-like concussion, It seemed almost as 
if the editor of the Zukunft had planted his 
sting. The cyclonic excitement over the interview 
was largely the after-effect of Harden^s revela- 
tions concerning the alleged " camarilla." 

The so-called " camarilla " owes its existence 
solely to the gossip of demagogues and of lackeys. 
The *' Round Table " is a malicious invention. 
Men of Prince zu Eulenburg's temperament are 
found frequently In all walks of life. Like many 
obviously minor poets, he is incurably romantic. It 
is only natural that he should have been attracted, 
as the moth to the flame; by the splendid and virile 
personality of the monarch whom he served with 
mediaeval devotion. Count Kuno von Moltke is 
a man of culture in the sense of the author of 
Marius the Epicurean. He has Nietzsche and 
Goethe at his finger-tips. Harden needlessly and 
unjustly dragged his name through the mire, 
wrecking his happiness to no purpose. 

Eulenburg's case is still undecided. He seems 
to have stumbled over a breath — a word — call 
it perjury if you will. Harden's clever journal- 
istic machinations have spread the erroneous Im- 
pression that he has proved his case: he hasn't. 
Eulenburg, hounded almost to death by Harden's 
sensational persecution, may never again be able 
to speak in his own defense. Harden, however, 
stands morally convicted of treason to his country, 
and. Incidentally, to his own scientific convictions. 



48 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

He has passed judgment upon himself. His 
weekly mental acrobatics, scorned by the truly 
elect, serve to amuse only the intellectual gallery. 
To the majority of the German public he is no 
longer a martyr. The shield of the Hohenzol- 
lern gleams brighter than ever. His absolute inde- 
pendence of irresponsible advisers and his political 
sagacity are no longer questioned. 

Like Frederick the Great in his time, William 
II is the cynosure of the world. His seal is graven 
upon the Book of Life perhaps more deeply than 
Bismarck's. Still, there must be bitterness in his 
heart when he remembers the immediate past. I 
thought of it in Potsdam when I retraced the steps 
of his great progenitor. 

Potsdam, the Kaiser's favorite residence, is inti- 
mately associated with memories of Frederick the 
Great. It means much more to the German than 
Washington's headquarters means to us. Wash- 
ington had many headquarters. His appetite, ap- 
parently, was terrific. He seems to have stopped 
at every road-house between New York and 
Philadelphia, and to have slept in innumerable 
places. 

The picturesque is conspicuously absent in our 
history. We haven't much of a history, anyway. 
There is the story of the Cherry Tree and the 
Declaration of Independence, a couple of wars, 
and Lincoln's assassination. For me, American 
history begins with Poe, not with Plymouth; not 



" S. M;' 49 

with the Constitution, but with Annabel Lee. 
Everything seems too near. We are dreadfully 
unromantic. Perhaps that is the reason why na- 
tive historical art fails to impress us. Who would 
be moved by the statue of the Father of his Coun- 
try, standing in what seems to be a bathing suit, on 
top of a^ole in the Capital? 

Frederick the Great and Washington were con- 
temporaries. I cannot think of Washington with- 
out smiling. 

In Potsdam I felt the weight of the centuries, 
and that a wonderful spirit had dwelt there. 
The little house where lived Voltaire, his dearest 
literary friend, somehow gave me a curious thrill. 
And with a chuckle I thought of the cruel things 
he said about Frederick's verse. 

I mounted the terrace that leads to the unpre- 
tentious hall where Frederick himself had pre- 
sided over his minions, smoking tobacco and say- 
ing acute things in French. And I saw in the twi- 
light the pool on which Frederick had set his 
heart, and which had never been completed in his 
lifetime, owing to the miscalculations of a stupid 
contractor. And there, in the shadow beyond, was 
the Historic Mill, whose owner had flaunted de- 
fiance in the face of the King. How they all 
hampered him in little things — the philosopher, 
and the miller, and the rascal who made a mess 
of the pool ! How like their descendants ! 

Night had fallen over the trees. Wistfully the 



50 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

moon smiled from above. Through the green 
foliage peered the pallid faces of statues, archers 
and Ganymedes, and delicate breasts bathed in 
moonlight. Seven little tombstones beckoned and 
gleamed from afar. *' These," remarked my com- 
panion, like myself an admirer of Frederick the 
Great, " these are the graves of his greyhounds. 
Despairing of men, he turned for solace to them." 

Frederick had ordained in his will that the 
faithful hounds should be buried at his side. Even 
that last wish was denied him. To me, these 
graves are the most pathetic things in the world. 
In the history of sorrow there is no page more sor- 
rowful and more sweet. I wonder if the Kaiser 
sometimes thinks of Frederick and his grey- 
hounds? 

All great men are sad at heart. I can imagine 
the Kaiser, wrapped in a miHtary cloak, standing 
there of a night and evoking in spirit the seven 
little ghosts of the hounds. Germany has forgot- 
ten how in a moment of hysterical agitation she 
trod his love underfoot. William II is great 
enough to forget. But surely, sometimes, like 
the smart of an old wound, the memory comes to 
him by the seven little graves in the gardens of 
Potsdam. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 

Somewhere in Germany there is a warrant 
sworn out for my apprehension. Somewhere the 
Public Prosecutor peers across the sea with a spy- 
glass. The German Empire, strangely enough, 
regards me still as her subject. She clings to me 
with the tenacity of a woman. I think she accuses 
me of desertion. A uniform, spick and span, and 
with brass buttons, is waiting for me. But I don't 
want it. I'd rather wear my blue serge suit. And, 
of course, it's all a mistake. I have politely in- 
formed Madame that I am an American citizen, 
and that she can not, can really not, count upon me. 

It isn't surprising that she carries my name on 
her list. It seems I was born between 1884 and 
1885 i^ the city of Munich. The event is said to 
have occurred on New Year's Eve. So, in a way, I 
have fallen between two stools. Future historians 
will have small difficulty in proving that I wasn't 
born at all. I don't want to be too definite about 
it. The lives of poets should be delightfully 
vague. The greatest poets are shrouded in mys- 
tery. The author of Shakespeare's plays, it seems, 

51 



52 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

never existed. And seven cities vie for the honor 
of having given birth to a person named Homer, 
who Is alleged to have written the Iliad. 

Let two continents wrestle for me. 

Henceforth shall I shun the detective camera. 
Like d^AnnunzIo, I shall sleep In the daytime. I 
shall endeavor to become a mythical figure like 
Bernard Shaw. All the elect know Bernard Shaw 
doesn't exist. It Is horribly Indiscreet of me to 
say so, but he Is really a hoax. He Invented him- 
self. That Is one of the reasons why he persist- 
ently refuses to startle the United States with his 
enigmatical presence. All the world loves a bluffer 
— at least In America. We have raised humbug 
to a fine art. But we are quick to discern It. Shaw 
Is afraid we'd find out that he is merely a resus- 
citated epigram of the late Oscar WUde, dropped 
by mistake In a volume of Marx. 

Already an aura of myths surrounds my head 
with a nebulous halo. I shall be a legendary fig- 
ure before I die. That Is the reason why I have 
deliberately courted a bad reputation. It Is a 
valuable asset for a poet of passion. When Swin- 
burne lost It by moving to Putney Hill with Mr. 
Watts Dunton, the savor went out of his song. I 
am convinced I shall never lose my evil glamor. 
I have bullded too well for that. And an hun- 
dred hands were stretched out to help me. Even 
If I weary, my friends, I feel sure, will persist in 
supporting the tottering structure. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 53 

I need not dwell here upon the now historical 
fact that my mother is a native of California. 
Years before my nativity my father made a lec- 
ture tour through the country. The date of my 
first appearance here I have never been able to 
verify with precision. Who^s Who places it at 
the age .of eleven. And through all the elapsing 
years some German magistrate's scribe has consci- 
entiously traced my footprints. Surely the mills 
of the Government grind exceeding small ! 

One night I was dined at the house of one of 
the Big Wigs of the German War Ministry. My 
host, cultured and genial, like all German officers, 
talked interestingly of the army. I asked him 
whether he knew of any general philosophic ex- 
position of militarism. He gave me some books 
on ' the subject, which I subsequently pondered 
with care. I know now how to marshal an army, 
and how to build bridges across a river, besides 
various strategic devices. But my knowledge is 
theoretical, like a young poet's knowledge of sin. 
And I nowhere discovered the theory of militarism, 
the philosophic defense of the thing. After all, 
nothing that exists needs a defense. Pope was 
right about that. 

Of course, it seems preposterous that people 
should be drilled to riddle each other with bullets. 
I, for one, don't believe in it. Life to me is a 
sacred thing. Besides, I'd be afraid to handle a 
gun. I'd rather have a broken heart than a tooth- 



54 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

ache. Still, Good, like Evil, inheres in all things. 
I agree with the Persians who divided the cosmos 
equally between God and the Devil. We must 
accept both, and then establish our personal equi- 
librium. That, it seems to me, is the art of living. 
Militarism is not wholly the work of the Devil. 
I cannot picture the Goddess of Peace without a 
sword. The olive branch of the dove should 
really be a torpedo. To the German mind no such 
justification is needed. It is as natural to the Ger- 
man to serve in the army as it is to be born; and 
those who do not serve might as well never have 
been born. 

One yearns compulsory military service is a salu- 
tary experience. Most of us are neglectful of ex- 
ercise. We develop certain sets of muscles, but 
there is little general training even among college 
athletes. Systematic and rigorous physical train- 
ing at a critical age is worth more than millions. 
The Emperor's service, moreover, keeps the 
young male, if not out of mischief, at least out of 
marriage, until the white fires of adolescence sober 
into the steady warmth of connubial affection. 
" But,*' you say, " time is money.'* Twelve vital 
months are canceled from your accounts! Yet I 
should hardly consider them a loss, but a profit- 
able investment, bearing an interest of one thou- 
sand per cent. Medical authorities have carefully 
calculated that compulsory military service length- 
ens the German average of life by ten years. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM SS 

H. G. Wells, In one of his yarns, tells of a Time 
Savings Bank, where futile hours may be de- 
posited, to be drawn upon when necessity or de- 
light prompts us to lengthen the day. I have 
vainly searched In financial directories for this 
unique Institution. Even J. P. Morgan, master of 
destinies and of millions, cannot purchase a single 
minute from Father Time. No Wall Street oper- 
ator can corner this market. Military service is 
the only practical Time Savings Bank in exist- 
ence. After the first substantial deposit, the di- 
rectors exact small periodic payments when mili- 
tary maneuvers mimic the ire of Mars. Soon ex- 
penditures cease altogether, but at the end of your 
life — or what would have been the end — you 
can live on the Interest. 

It has been said that the Prussian schoolmaster 
won the battles of Frederick the Great. The 
German army to-day Is a national school. Every 
company Is a school class, with recruits as pupils, 
and officers as instructors. The officers, in turn, 
receive Instruction from their superiors, and the 
War Academy In Berlin furnishes, so to speak, 
special post-graduate courses in warfare. Mili- 
tary service Is said to Increase the efficiency of the 
young German by twenty-five per cent. Rustic 
swains return to their homes with new ideas. 
They learn to apply themselves systematically. 
They learn manners, respect for their intellectual 
betters. And, incidentally, also, the use of soap. 



S6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

The young soldier Is a powerful factor In Ger- 
man aesthetics. He is a splash of color on the 
gray face of the world. His glittering uniform 
and his bluish cloak, artistically lined with red, are 
an eloquent plea against Insipid civilian Fashion, 
which has banished gaiety In masculine attire to 
the comic opera stage. There Is nobility in his 
carriage. His eyes flash fire. He is handsome, 
being healthy, young, and, In the beginning at 
least, clean-shaven. 

There Is something distinctly animalic in 
bearded faces. Perhaps that Is the reason why 
some women succumb to their spell. The beast in 
the female responds to the simian reminiscence — 
atavistic, no doubt — in the male. To me, a 
bearded man suggests the ancient Assyrian. The 
dust of the ages seems to nestle in the hirsute pro- 
jection. I would not be at all surprised If a scar- 
abaeus, startled at a touch, were to creep from Its 
somber recesses. Young men should shave clean. 
Later, when sin and sorrow have dug holes In 
their cheeks and the years have distorted their 
lips, it is perhaps well that they should hide 
their wasted loveliness under a growth of hair. 

I have no aesthetic objection to flowing beards 
in old men, and to a mustache in a father. I 
couldn't Imagine my own father without one. 
The well developed mustache may epitomize mas- 
culine maturity and completeness. But the frag- 
mentary, tooth-brush-like growth many young 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 57 

Germans affect on their upper lip Is perfectly 
hideous. A young German teacher confided to 
me that he had grown a beard In order to Impress 
his pupils with a sense of his dignity. He has the 
face of a cherub, yet he makes himself look like 
a goat! 

Soldiers are garrisoned, as a rule, far from 
their homes. Regiments are frequently shifted. 
The soldier thus comes In touch with various parts 
of the country. Everywhere he acquires new 
knowledge. He learns to see his own com- 
munity In Its proper perspective. The oneness of 
the Fatherland dawns upon him. It Is an object- 
lesson In patriotism. 

In the past, at least, maneuvers were held al- 
ternately in various spots of the country with 
unavowed ethnic Intentions. Some villages, far 
from the high road, were degenerating. Inter- 
marriages between relatives were the rule. 
Hydrocephalous children were not Infrequent. 
The presence of the soldiers Injected new blood 
Into the shriveled veins of the hamlet. The stork 
followed frequently. Marriages sometimes. 
*' Nice '' people won't approve of this. But It Is 
defensible from the viewpoint of racial ethics. Na- 
ture Isn't moral, and she has a trick of not waiting 
for magisterial permits. 

The modern railway has largely supplanted the 
necessity for this system, but It Is still a factor In 
racial development. Remember that all able- 



58 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

bodied young men are pressed Into service, and 
that they are scattered all over the country. The 
glad blood leaps in their veins. Courtships are 
spun everywhere. Many return to wed where 
they wooed. It is fascinating to reflect how the 
administrative process that carries young manhood 
from province to province furnishes a striking 
parallel to the function of the wind, love-courier 
from garden to garden in the vegetable domain. 

In the ranks of the officers, aristocratic titles 
prevail. In some regiments only blue blood is ac- 
cepted at par. The growing power of the bour- 
geoisie, however, Is shattering this feudal barrier. 
I am not democratic, and I cannot say that I hail 
the change with delight. There Is much to be said 
for blue blood, and old titles, and families with 
traditions. We estimate a horse by Its pedigree, 
and we value the family tree of a puppy-dog. The 
same laws of heredity and evolution surely apply 
to humans. Nobility Is the pillar of state and 
throne. What I have said of the Institution of 
monarchy applies with equal force to the noble. 
His subsistence to-day is incongruous. But life 
itself Is pregnant with contradictions. 

The aristocrat, no doubt, frequently falls short 
of his standards. But his standards are fine. Not 
long ago, a cousin of mine, a young lieutenant, 
scion of one of the oldest families In the country, 
committed suicide because his superior officer had 
censured him for some trivial misunderstanding. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 59 

His sense of honor was so acutely developed that 
a word of disapprobation was a death-warrant. 
Foolish, perhaps. The boy was high-strung, un- 
balanced. 

Recently an American officer was tried before 
a court-martial for a flagrantly dishonorable act. 
The sentence passed upon him, being absurdly 
light, was subsequently overturned by the com- 
mander-in-chief. A mistaken sense of esprit de 
corps seems to have blinded his judges. What- 
ever their motives, whose code of honor was 
higher, theirs or the dead lad's? To whom would 
we rather entrust the safety of a country? 

The incident, presumably, is not symptomatic. 
Our officers, I am convinced, are as honorable as 
any. In Germany, however, certain canons of 
honor are established immutably. The duel is 
partly responsible for the German rigor, barbar- 
ous at times, in matters relating to honor. It is 
not a purely military institution, but a practice 
sanctioned by academic tradition. Insult is not 
passed over lightly among Germans. We freely 
hurl, at least in print, insulting epithets at each 
other. We may not blacken a person's eye, but 
we blacken his reputation. Yet every time we call 
a public servant a thief or a liar, the moral stand- 
ard is lowered. If the president is a liar and the 
governor a thief, crime seems innocuous. Through 
constant reiteration, first the word, then the thing 
Itself, Impresses us more lightly. Our libel laws 



6o CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

are inefficient. The use of the fist is unsatisfactory, 
especially as moral heroes are apt to be under- 
sized. A sword scratch is wildly romantic; a 
bloody nose isn't. 

The army, in spite of the preference given in 
some regiments to titled officers, is a republican 
institution. It is more democratic than Bebel. 
There is nothing more democratic. Military ser- 
vice, being incumbent upon all, temporarily levels 
distinctions of caste. Once they wear *' the Em- 
peror's coat," prince and peasant are equals. Even 
princes of the blood are not spared the tribula- 
tions of the poorest lieutenant. Any tendency to 
uppishness is promptly suppressed. 

Where officers and privates belong to the same 
class, cordial relations are irreconcilable with eti- 
quette. The German officer can afford to make 
himself democratic, because he is not, so to speak, 
one of the common people. He cannot lose caste 
socially by mixing with them as comrades. I re- 
member walking down Unter den Linden with my 
military friend. Every time a common soldier 
saluted, and it happened with embarrassing fre- 
quency, he courteously returned the salute. He 
had instructed his subordinate officers to be equally 
attentive. And every salute was a renewed asser- 
tion of the unity of the grandiose machinery in 
which general and private, each in his own way, 
are of equal importance. 

I am an individualist. Yet there are moments 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM 6i 

when it Is sweet to grow out of the shell of self. 
There is, perhaps, dangerous intoxication in 
crowds; to be swayed by the common impulse 
when the mysterious force psychologists call 
'' mass suggestion " sweeps through the channels 
of the brain, breaking the flood-gates of mental 
reserve. Such must be the soldier's experience in 
war or some great maneuver. Think of a million 
young souls swearing fealty to one flag, made one 
by the ties of comradeship and obedience, and a 
new sense of brotherhood born of common experi- 
ence! 

All the vitality of the nation Is there. Passion 
and youth, brawn and brain, are enthralled by one 
dominant purpose. How irresistible Is this 
phalanx! What an immense force! What 
strange hysteria ! Only Walt Whitman could de- 
pict such emotions, cosmic and sensuous. Even 
the most confirmed egotist forgets his subjective 
existence. His heart for the nonce beats In unison 
with the world's. He Is one with the race and the 
earth. Earth-emotions, Titanic and terrifying, 
throb in his veins. He can perform miracles of 
endurance and valor. 

Henceforth, If his country calls, he will blindly 
follow her summons. He will love the Father- 
land with a love intensely personal, as one loves a 
woman. He has experienced an emotion deeper 
than patriotism, fiercer than lust. Future and past 
have met in one glance. A subtle change is 



62 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

wrought within his being. He is the citizen trans- 
figured. Never again will he be quite what he 
has been — like a child who, having strayed in 
the wold, has had converse with fairies. Like 
the lover to whom passion has revealed its ulti- 
mate secret. Like the prophet who has seen .God 
in a bush. 



CHAPTER VI 

INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 

Germany is an inspired bureaucracy. Her real 
ruler is the bureaucrat. His impress is every- 
where. We generally associate the bureaucrat 
with the pedant. Frenchmen run to lechery. Am- 
ericans incline to graft. Pedantry is the German 
vice. It might have become the national poison, 
had not William II injected the potent antidote of 
his individualism into the body politic. The men 
at the helm of German affairs to-day have main- 
tained the Prussian tradition of strict adherence 
to duty. But their horizon has widened. Sus- 
tained, not ossified by routine, they follow the star 
of the new. 

I have met four Ministers of State, four Am- 
bassadors, one sovereign Burgomaster, " Excel- 
lencies " by the score, and Privy Councilors in- 
numerable. Everywhere I found alertness and 
life. There was, on the whole, little " red tape." 
If we elect a vital personahty to office, and we 
feel that for once we have a man, not a marion- 
ette, we bubble over with enthusiasm and are loath 
to lose him even temporarily in the African jungle. 

63 



64 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

In Germany every bureau has Its Roosevelt. Few 
but the Inner Circle know their names. They 
claim no public credit for their achievements. 
Unadvertised and unsung, they plod away at their 
desks. But their plans are accomplished, their 
dreams projected. 

A man of this type, a mind fascinatingly radio- 
active, was the late Friedrich Althoff. The Min- 
istry of Culture, to render the spirit, not the let- 
ter, of the original term, was the center of his 
ceaseless radiation. Strenuous, autocratic, he 
ruled with an iron rod. It is said that the Kaiser 
himself made concessions to him that he would not 
have made to a fellow-sovereign. There was no 
grandiose scheme of reform in which he was not 
a participant. No vital idea was left orphaned 
and begging on the steps of his office. In his 
bureau the most vital educational Idea of the cen- 
tury, the international exchange of intellectual 
commodities, stepped full-fledged from a profes- 
sional cerebrum. Althoff adopted the waif; he 
nourished it and sustained it. Who was its father 
we shall never know. I am personally acquainted 
with at least four claimants to that distinction. 
If I give the palm to any I shall mortally offend 
the rest. 

Applying the Napoleonic code, let us not, there- 
fore, Inquire into the paternite. It was Althoff, 
at any rate, who built the bridge for the 
foundling across the Atlantic. Every professor 



INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 65 

traversing the ocean Is a living monument to this 
remarkable man. 

Yet, so little known was this inspired bureau- 
crat outside of his circle that his death passed 
unnoticed by the American press. The first Kaiser 
Wllhelm Professor, John W. Burgess, had not 
heard of the occurrence until he received a letter 
from a mutual friend. 

Althoff's spirit still hovers over the ministry, as 
Bismarck's over the Foreign Office. If Bismarck 
consolidated his country's political strength. It re- 
mains Althoff's distinction to have conquered the 
New World Intellectually; at least, to have opened 
to the German mind the citadels of our universi- 
ties, where formerly only brave pioneers like 
Hugo Miinsterberg and Kuno Francke had 
gained Isolated footholds. Conquests of peace, 
unlike conquests of war, are of mutual benefit to 
conqueror and vanquished, and the gates of Ger- 
man universities swing graciously open to Invaders 
from the American side. Althoff's spirit abides in 
the American Institute founded after his death In 
the capital of the Kaiser. Surely bureaucracy has 
its victories, and education its Bismarcks. 

Our Commissioner of Education, our nearest 
approach to the German Kultusminister, Is prac- 
tically powerless. His German colleague has a 
firm grip on matters of religion, education and art. 
In the body politic the Ministry of Culture may be 
compared with the soul. The amount of work 



66 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

transacted In the humble building situated, if I 
rightly remember, at the Intersection of the Wil- 
helmstrasse and Unter den Linden, Is hardly 
credible. From morning until night the ante- 
rooms are crowded with foreign visitors and pro- 
fessorial aspirants. I have seen the Man Higher 
Up still at work at half-past nine in the evening. 
His bureau Is an Intellectual telephone-central 
where all the wires converge. If we had a new 
idea, we should never dream of Inviting the co- 
operation of a government official. In Germany 
all new ideas are submitted to official sanction, and 
vital Ideas are not often rejected. 

The German professor receives his inspiration 
largely from the Minister of Culture. His position 
is curiously hybrid. He is part of the bureaucratic 
system, yet intellectually independent. Those who 
direct affairs at the Ministry are hidden from 
public sight. The professor, however, as the Man 
Higher Up explained to me, stands between them 
and the world. The modern German professor 
has nothing in common with the type made familiar 
to all through the Fliegende Blatter. He is a 
practical man, alive to the call of the age. There 
Is nothing of the academic fossil about him. He 
Is human, ambitious, and often a man of brilliant 
Intellectual attainment. We labor under the im- 
pression that his remuneration is scant. We cer- 
tainly underpay our professors. The Income of the 
German professor I understand to be princely com- 



INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 67 

pared with that of his American compeer. In ad- 
dition to his salary, he receives a certain tithe from 
the students attending his lectures. Popular lec- 
turers are known thus to have increased their 
stipends by from forty to fifty thousand marks in 
a single year. They are officers in that army of 
culture -of which the Kultusminister is the com- 
mander-in-chief. 

Not far from the Kultus minis terium we find 
the Foreign Office. The cluster of buildings har- 
boring this department may fitly be likened to the 
brain in the anatomy of the State. Here are con- 
ceived the political scores, which through the joint 
instrumentation of the Kaiser and his advisers have 
made Germany the bandmaster in the Concert of 
Nations. It is not often that a false note Is 
sounded. German diplomacy frequently com- 
bines, with the genius of Richard Strauss, appar- 
ent dissonances into harmonies effective and start- 
ling. I have stated before that, In the opinion of 
the super-wise, the Emperor's interview in the 
London Telegraph was a brilliant stroke of diplo- 
macy to be justified by future events. At the same 
time, there seems no doubt that bungling was not 
absent from the matter. The fact in the case is 
that the fateful manuscript was slipped by mistake 
into the wrong portfolio. Some one was careless, 
one cog was out of place, and the whole machinery 
came apparently to a standstill. Not because it 
was poorly organized, but because It was so splen- 



68 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

didly organized. In such an exquisite machine, 
the slightest break is fatal. 

The Foreign Office is almost rustic in its trap- 
pings. The sofas and carpets in the reception- 
room are positively shabby. No one who has ever 
seen the inside of the Foreign Office can maintain 
that Germany is not economical. A dentist's wait- 
ing-room is Oriental in luxury by comparison. 
Still there Is a certain charm In Imagining that 
perhaps It was the ashes from Bismarck's pipe that 
burned this hole In the carpet; that his Titanic 
back rubbed the bloom from that couch. No 
stenographer Is employed in the political depart- 
ment. Never Is the homely click of the typewriter 
heard! In Downing Street the secretaries dictate 
their letters into the ear of the phonograph; in 
the Wilhelmstrasse high officials themselves write 
their letters out in long-hand. Secrecy is bought 
at the cost of convenience. Quarters are crowded. 
Of comfort, of elegance, no trace. I feel that I 
could not work In such a place unless I were at 
least a privy councilor. If I were, surroundings 
wouldn't matter. I wouldn't lose my self-respect 
even in the humblest abode, supplied by a par- 
simonious government, because, after all, I would 
myself be part of that government. 

I wonder if such considerations account for the 
German system of titles? There Is to us some- 
thing funny in calling everybody by his bureau- 
cratic title, because we are ignorant of the eco- 



INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 69 

nomic, ethical, aesthetic and social function of the 
thing. The Geheimrat, or Privy Councilor, and 
his varieties, people half the fashionable streets 
of Berlin. He is easily recognizable by his long 
frock coat, and the distinction with which he car- 
ries a portfolio under his arm. Some privy coun- 
cilors are apparently purely imaginary creatures. 
For a distinction seems to be made between 
" real " and " unreal " privy councilors. The for- 
mer, the '' wirkliche/^ has entered the bureaucratic 
heaven; the mere privy councilor, like a soul un- 
born, hovers in the titular limbo. " Real " privy 
councilors are addressed " Your Excellency," a 
title also bestowed upon high military officials, 
ambassadors and ministers. Rectors of universi- 
ties and burgomasters of sovereign cities are 
called " Your Magnificence." 

Even outside the sphere of bureaucracy, bureau- 
cratic customs prevail. Social hfe is impregnated 
with its spirit. In addressing a person you label 
him. The nightwatchman is Mr. Night Watch- 
man. His wife is referred to as Mrs. Night 
Watchman. A Colonel's wife is Mrs. Colonel. 
A doctor's wife Mrs. Doctor, although ladies who 
have earned the title object to its use by females 
not so distinguished. The title, it seems, estab- 
lishes a communion between husband and wife, 
which even divorce cannot sever. I know of a lady 
who, when she parted from her husband, was Mrs. 
Lieutenant. When the rank of Colonel was ac- 



70 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

corded to him, she rose to the occasion. And I 
have at this moment In my possession her visiting 
card with the legend: " Mrs. General, Excellency." 

It's rather hard at first to kowtow symbolically 
every time you open your mouth, if you are a title- 
less stranger. Which reminds me of the young 
American who registered as Elector of New York, 
and was received everywhere like a prince. My 
father happens to be president of various societies; 
he was introduced consequently to a lot of excel- 
lencies as " Mr. President." He never got rid of 
the title. I am vice president of a publishing com- 
pany, and I have firmly made up my mind to adopt 
that title the next time I travel abroad. The 
porter will make innumerable genuflections as I 
enter the hotel, and there will be an awesome 
catch in the chambermaid's voice as she brings me 
the coffee. 

Besides, as I have said, the subject has a dis- 
tinctly economic aspect. Germany pays her offi- 
cials better than we do. But she cannot afford to 
pay them nearly enough, considering that her most 
brilliant men enter her service. In fact, money 
alone could not pay them. And being an econom- 
ical lady, she compensates them with titles and 
decorations. It Is cheaper to endow an official 
with a high title than to double his salary. 
The title, more than any amount of money, deter- 
mines his social pre-eminence. If he be a poor 
man, no one expects lavish entertainments of him. 



INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 71 

The millionaire gladly trots up four flights to the 
humble dwelling of the Herr Geheimrat. And a 
cup of tea prepared in His Excellency's kitchen 
goes to the head of the social climber like Asti 
Spiimanti. When a German officer in moderate 
circumstances Invites you to dinner, he doesn't at- 
tempt to show off. His rank insures his social 
standing; he need not buy your respect with truf- 
fles, or cannonade the castle of caste with a battery 
of champagne pops. These explanations were 
given me by a Minister of State whose honorable 
poverty exemplified the beauty of the system he 
expounded. 

A man who wears the ribbon of the Lecrlon 
of Honor will think twice before he participates 
in a street brawl. The bearer of a distinguished 
title will try to live up to that title. His social 
privileges entail social duties. German officers are 
not allowed to go out in civilian garb. The uni- 
form alone affords moral protection. Places of 
evil association are barred to them. Their iden- 
tity can be ascertained at a glance. Like the alder- 
man in a small town, they've got to be good. And 
there is always a stimulus in the hope of promo- 
tion: special merit receives special and visible 
recognition. The philanthropist's energy will be 
redoubled, If he knows that the eyes of his sov- 
ereign are resting upon him, and that he need not 
wait for the next world before a reward comes to 
him in the shape of some titular honor. We re- 



72 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

ward our millionaire philanthropists by cracking 
jokes at their expense. The comic press is their 
Hall of Fame. I am sure the fear of ridicule has 
tightened the purse-strings of many a bashful Car- 
negie. That is one of the reasons why I, at any 
rate, have never founded a museum. 

The public is a doubting Thomas, and reputa- 
tion in art and science is an indeterminable factor. 
A title, a decoration, assays a man's worth. 
American society is afraid to receive the artist, and 
ignores the scholar. Germany lends the title of 
" professor " to distinguished artists, and, of 
course, to distinguished scientists. That is their 
passport. Great artists may dispense with it. 
Men of Menzel's stamp need no passport beyond 
that of genius. Still their path is made smoother 
thereby. They are in less danger of being snubbed 
by inferiors. And, of course, in Germany, a title 
is a thing of very substantial value. A man who 
assumes a title he has not earned Is a thief, and is 
punished accordingly. Professors of pedicure and 
clairvoyance are unknown In Berlin. Titles, while 
ungrudgingly given to those who have a right to 
them, are sternly denied to fakirs. 

We may regard Inherited titles as absurd, but 
titles earned by service are certainly sensible, one 
may even say, democratic. It's the one chance of 
the burgher to get even with the nobility. While 
the system establishes a differential social tariff, it 
creates no obstacle that cannot be overcome by 



INSPIRED BUREAUCRACY 73 

merit. And as the soldier's uniform lends patches 
of color to the street, the titles devised by bureau- 
cracy brighten the salon. It's much more inter- 
esting to talk to a circle of privy councilors than 
to be surrounded by a lot of Mr. Smiths and Mrs. 
Somebodys. I don't blame our heiresses for want- 
ing to marry men of position and title. A simple 
baron sheds some luster on social functions, and it 
is incredible what sparkle the presence of an Ex- 
cellency lends to a lady's " At Home." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MORALS OF EUROPE 

Ladies and gentlemen, who have followed me 
so far, are you not astounded at my conservatism? 
I am. I described myself once as a conservative 
Anarchist. I am afraid there is little of the An- 
archist in my composition to-day. Europe has 
transformed and converted me. I have set my 
face toward order. I fear that a suspicion of re- 
spectability always lurked in my heart. Of 
course, people will never believe me. They 
imagine that I live the life of an aesthetic tramp, 
break up homes, and am continually in debt, 
merely because my name is attached to certain 
passional studies. A bank account, it seems, is ir- 
reconcilable with a poet of passion. 

Dear souls, I am really a Philistine. I am scru- 
pulously honest, and as for wild oats, I have never 
sown them. Poets, like the comets, those celestial 
Bohemians, are privileged to deviate from their 
orbits. My actions may at times contradict my 
words. Do not, therefore, question my sincerity. 
I certainly must refuse to live up to all the things 
I am preaching. At the present, however, I be- 

74 



THE MORALS OF EUROPE 75 

lleve in them. I have forsaken my radical affilia- 
tions. I have returned to the fold. But, alas, no 
fatted calf Is in sight. I made more money when 
I was supposed to be wicked. 

Having thus disposed of my morals, let us now 
examine the morals of Europe. I see a look of 
quickeaed Interest In your eyes. You will be ter- 
ribly disappointed. In America we are accus- 
tomed to associate morality pre-eminently with 
sex. Don Juan Is to us the devil Incarnate. We 
regard a sexually continent man as a moral man. 
We have no objection to his " correcting luck " in 
financial affairs. Measured by American standards 
Atys must have been a paragon of Virtue. And 
the Sultan, too, is surrounded by virtuous men. 

Sex has really nothing to do with morals. It 
belongs to the sphere of passion; being natural, it 
is unmoral. Loving, like dining, Is not an ethical 
function. The eunuch may be moral or immoral. 
The Mormon likewise. There is no justification 
for confusing ethical problems with physiological 
problems. Love is never immoral, because It 
necessarily implies mutual consent. Only where 
that Is absent, an erotic question becomes an ethical 
question. Within the Golden Rule no amorous 
experience can possibly be immoral. Thus, ex- 
cept in loveless marriages or in rape, ethical prob- 
lems rarely arise in the realm of passion. I shall 
not, therefore, discuss Europe's sexual morality 
under this heading. 



76 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

We, In America, regard Europe as Immoral be- 
cause of a curious notion that sex, In Itself, is Im- 
moral. With the elimination of the sexual factor, 
the morals of Europe are superior to ours. The 
European's Integrity in business, his sense of so- 
cial duty, and his firm adherence to an intangible 
code of professional honor, thrown against our 
American background, endow him with the halo 
of saintshlp. I wonder if the insistence on ethical 
and religious training abroad In public schools Is 
not, like militarism, a blessing in disguise. 

We abhor the idea of injecting religious 
instruction into our educational system, al- 
though, absurdly enough, we approve of indis- 
criminate Bible-readings in schools, irrespective of 
the children's religious persuasions, and expect even 
the atheist to swear in court on the Book. 

You are a church-goer presumably. But I am 
sure your religious notions are hazy. Perhaps 
you go to church as to a social function. If you 
had been brought up in Germany you would 
know exactly what you believed and what you did 
not believe. For one thing, you would have had 
systematic religious training in school. And you 
would have learned to apply your religion daily, 
as you apply the multiplication table. Both Gen- 
tile and Jew are instructed by special teachers of 
their own faith In the elements of their creed, as 
they are instructed in geography and spelling. 
When they grow up they will have to pay taxes 



THE MORALS OF EUROPE 77 

in support of the State Church or the Synagogue, 
unless they formally declare their dissent from the 
faith. They will not take this step without seri- 
ous reflection. They are thus forced to think 
clearly for themselves. That may ultimately blast 
the Rock of Ages with intellectual dynamite, but 
at least-they will know for what it stands. 

American children are often curiously ignorant 
of even the most beautiful of Biblical stories, 
things they should know as matters of general cul- 
ture. Already the Sunday School despairs of 
itself. It reaches only a comparatively small per- 
centage of children. It cannot hammer religion 
into them as a part of their general education. It 
is an outside thing in school. And an outside thing 
it remains in life. We take our religion on Sun- 
days as one takes medicine. If conscience calls 
during business hours, we aren't in. Sporadically, 
however, we experience religion with hysterical 
intensity. The corruptionist suddenly discovers 
,that he is wicked, and, like the newly-converted 
savage, he suffers from violent ethical cramps. 
With this difference: the savage, in sudden re- 
ligious fervor, may inflict harikari upon himself; 
the reformed American millionaire vents his re- 
ligion on others. He plays Jack the Ripper to 
Personal Liberty. He makes large donations to 
the Anti-Saloon League. He deprives the little 
ones of their Sunday. 

We in America are Supermen in our glorious 



78 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

disregard of others, but without the excuse of | 
the Superman. We are like children badly 
brought up. Our lack of sensitiveness is amaz- 
ingly revealed in the comic supplement of our 
newspapers, the weekly glorification of horse-play. 
The comic press is an unfailing determinant of a 
country's morals. I am prepared to admit that 
the coarse reflection of the life erotic in French 
and German comic journals points to a similar 
lack of sensitiveness on the Continent in matters 
relating to sex. 

We are perhaps most barbarous, most uneth- 
ical, in our attitude toward age. We lack that 
tact of the heart for which white hair in itself is 
an object of veneration. The wonder is that we 
don't eat up our parents when their physical pow- 
ers decline. I am sure that certain exponents of 
strenuousness would have something to say in de- 
fense of this practice. We would have heard 
such a measure urged from the White House if 
our chief executives were not themselves already 
beyond the Oslerian age-limit. 

The fathers of the Republic have, indeed, 
shown their wisdom when they placed the highest 
gift beyond the grasp of a boy. The cult of Os- 
lerism could flourish only in the youngest land of 
the world. We value youth above brains. I may 
state so frankly, having both. We yield our seats 
in a street railway gladly to young girlhood; with 
reluctance to an elderly woman; never would we 



THE MORALS OF EUROPE 79 

dream of sacrificing our convenience to an elderly 
man. In Europe I have seen young ladies charm- 
ingly offer their seats to their elders of either sex. 

Recently Mr. Roosevelt, before his departure 
for Africa — (How quaint this sentence will ring 
in a hundred years when we have all passed into 
history!) — desperately clung to a strap in a 
Broadway car. Perhaps, if he had still brandished 
the Big Stick we would have shown some courtesy 
to the man. But we have no reverence for past 
attainment. We have no use for the " has-been." 
No title softens the pillow of an " ex-." Abroad, 
a distinguished man is honored not only for what 
he is, but for what he has been in the past. 
Our regard is confined to the man in oflice; 
for the retired fighter we have merely a mild 
contempt. 

We forgive the man of action every sin except 
the one forgivable sin. We countenance a Sen- 
ator's political corruption, but rise in anger over 
his indiscreet note to some questionable female. 
We boil over with indignation, where Paris or 
Berlin would shrug their shoulders and smile. 
Uncharitable, I say, and un-Christian. Christ 
drove the money-changers from the temple, but he 
forgave the Magdalen. 

We are rather proud at heart of our financial 
robber barons. We expect art to be moral. We 
never question the morals of Wall street. We ap- 
ply the penal code to the artist, but we have only 



8o CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

regard for the virtuoso in manipulating the ticker. 
We set up monuments to grafters. Personally, I 
have no objection to graft. On the contrary. But 
I am afraid that it is a vice typically American. 
There are grafters abroad, naturally. But one 
does not speak of them with sneaking admiration. 
They aren't " the thing," socially. They are not 
regarded as models for the young. In Europe the 
day of the robber baron is over; in America it has 
only begun. 

We do not interfere with the big thieves, ex- 
cept by calling them names. But we interfere 
actively with the personal freedom of our humbler 
citizens. We forbid them to play or to drink beer 
on Sunday. I never play athletic games, and I 
hardly ever drink beer. But I sometimes burn 
with desire to soak myself with rum as a protest 
against the fanatics. I believe, to paraphrase 
Wilde, that it is not immoral for a prickly thistle 
to be a prickly thistle, but that it would be fright- 
fully selfish if she wanted all the flowers of the 
field to be both prickly and thistles. I have noth- 
ing to say against the teetotaler. I respect his 
individuality. But let him respect mine. We 
continually sin against individuality. Ours is 
a country of ready-made morals and ready- 
made clothes. Abroad no one meddles with 
personal liberty, and nobody wears ready-made 
clothes. 

Conformity is our catchword. We suppress 



THE MORALS OF EUROPE 8i 

subjective forces in politics and in art. We elim- 
inate the personal note in the press. The day of 
the Greeleys was brief. Journalists abroad have 
certain convictions which they are not prepared to 
sacrifice at any price. We have no such convic- 
tions. One evening I had dinner in Berlin with 
a celebrated professor of political history. His 
name is on everybody's tongue. He is a man who 
hobnobs with Emperors, and his weekly reviews 
of the political situation are regarded as final. 
All the newspapers of the world come to his 
library, and he reads them all in the original lan- 
guages. 

The conversation naturally drifted to journal- 
ism, and I interpreted for him the status of the 
American editor. The policy of the paper, I ex- 
plained, is prescribed by the proprietor and re- 
versed at his pleasure; the editor's personal opin- 
ion is of no consequence, even if his salary may be 
that of a king. He is a living automaton, paid for 
his dexterity, not his views. He might write 
Democratic editorials in the morning, and Repub- 
lican editorials at night. In private life he might 
be a Socialist or a Mugwump. Yet no one would 
think the less of him, or brand him as an unprin- 
cipled rogue. I did not pretend to be better than 
others. I even admitted that to be such an in- 
tellectual Jekyll and Hyde might be a delightful 
sensation. As long as my articles were unsigned, 
I would not regard myself as responsible for their 



82 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

tenor. I should look upon my job as an exercise 
In political dialectics. 

The professor was very much shocked by this 
lack of principle. His wife, a delightful woman, 
looked upon me as one looks upon a leper. A 
German journalist of standing would refuse to 
write a line, signed or unsigned, of which he dis- 
approved In his heart. Those who sacrifice their 
convictions are regarded as pariahs by the profes- 
sion at large. Journalists abroad take themselves 
more seriously than we. They have finer ethical 
standards. The professor, being not only a 
learned, but also a wise man, realized that the 
views I expounded were the logical growth of our 
peculiar culture — or the lack thereof; but I am 
afraid he looks upon them as cancerous. Which, 
perhaps, they are. 

We play the game to win. We have little of the 
sportsman's joy In the game as such. Not for us 
the subtler victory of courageous defeat. As 
money is the stake, we despise the poor — not be- 
cause they are poor, but because they have not 
" made good.'' We make compromises, permissible 
In journalism, but fatal In art. Literary geniuses 
of the old world are prepared, for the sake of 
their vision, to live on a crust. Schiller was a man 
of small means. Indeed, I probably got more for 
my English version of his Maid of Orleans from 
Maude Adams than he ever did for the original. 
Chatterton " perished in his pride." I, Le Galll- 



THE MORALS OF EUROPE 83 

enne says, perish in my conceit. Honorable pov- 
erty had no terror for the great English poets. 
We barter dreamland kingdoms for real estate. 

Our greatest living author is actually a corpora- 
tion. We may speak of " The Mark Twain " as 
we speak of '' The Standard Oil." That opens 
amusing vistas of " The John Milton, Limtd.," 
and *' The William Shakespeare, Inc." For all 
we know, this may be the solution of the Shake- 
speare problem. William Shakespeare may have 
been merely the trade-mark for a stock company, 
of which Francis Bacon was the chief stockholder, 
and the gentleman usually referred to as the au- 
thor of the plays merely a dummy director! If 
John Keats had been an American he might have 
been incorporated under the laws of New Jersey. 
His name, instead of being '' writ in water," 
would be writ on watered stock! The genius of 
Poe, alas, was antipodal to the American spirit. 
If he had capitalized his brains at five hundred 
thousand dollars, he would surely be in the Hall 
of Fame. Let me state right here that I refuse 
ever to have my name there engraven. I prefer 
to roam through the spirit world unindorsed by 
smug nobodies, a vagabond ghost with Whitman 
and Poe. 

I turn an honest penny wherever I can. While 
my attitude toward the Golden Calf is not one of 
worship, I approach it with considerable respect. 
Every dollar is so much potential energy impris- 



84 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

oned. But I refuse to water my literary stock for 
any amount of money. That is the only way an 
artist can be immoral. We have yet to learn the 
raptures of the scholar whose eyes grow dim with 
tears when, after digging in dusty tomes for five- 
and-twenty years, he discovers the root of some 
irregular verb. Not ours the thrill of the poet 
who, after sleepless nights, dances with glee be- 
cause he has at last wrested from his brain the ulti- 
mate expression for some sensuous and elusive 
emotion. We rank the man who gets away with 
another man's invention above the author himself. 
Logically, we should worship the devil because he 
gets away with such a large part of God's creation. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ADAM AND EVE 

We exaggerate racial distinctions. Save for 
skin and clothes we are not, any of us, far removed 
from the ape. Primal Instincts In men and women 
are the same throughout the world, and the lure 
of the flesh Is the same. The American college 
boy and the young Eskimo In his sealskin are 
stirred by the same primitive Impulse. The fun- 
damental facts of sex are Identical In Kalamazoo 
and In Pekln. But our attitudes toward sex un- 
dergo various transformations, with changes of 
climate. We all have the same appetites, but our 
modes of gratification vary with our refinement. 
The table manners at Sherry's are not those of 
Chllds'. The desire of Lucullus for whipped 
oysters, and the ravin of the Parisians, who stood 
in line for bread during the great revolution, were 
fundamentally one and the same hunger; but the 
mastication of the Roman was art, while the 
French mob chewed, munched and bolted hide- 
ously. Similarly, It may be safely aflfirmed, that 
the ways of the love-famished lad are not those of 
the gourmet. 

85 



86 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

Europeans are gourmets m love. They relish 
It as they relish their oysters. We are a trifle 
ashamed of it. But, being human, we cannot 
starve ourselves. We steal to love's banquet 
stealthily, with an uncomfortable feeling of doing 
wrong. We sin, but we sin against our principles. 
The continental youth sins on principle. We make 
the flesh Indecent, a thing we despise, but from 
which, being human, we cannot divorce ourselves. 
The refined European spiritualizes the flesh; he 
makes It beautiful; he turns Its frailty into 
strength. Consequently, his love-life is healthier 
than our own. Even when hectic desire entices 
him Into devious gardens of passion, vulgarity will 
not bespatter his roses. We cannot be wicked 
without being coarse. The consciousness of sin 
dwells in our hearts like a worm. Spiritually there 
is nothing of the Greek In us. 

We may, however, speak of a renascence of the 
Greek spirit abroad. Euphorion has not yet 
sprung Into life. He is about to be born. Ger- 
many is in travail. She is laboring, painfully, 
slowly. Her, at times, morbid caprices in the im- 
mediate past were those of a woman enceinte. The 
trip of the Greek dance Is heard again in Berlin. 
The subtleties of Greek sophists are echoed In Ger- 
man letters. Poets hark back to the Hellenic 
themes — Hofmannsthal's CEdipus confronts the 
Sphinx. Electra wails in the music of Strauss. 
Nudity, the weapon of Phryne, is raised to an art 



ADAM AND EVE 87 

by Olga Desmond. The voice of Dionysos Is heard 
in Nietzsche. Germany's joy in the body Is not yet 
purely Hellenic. Poisonous vapors cloud the sun. 
But sunrise Is nigh. Already we hear the little 
laugh of Aspasla. Germany has beheld the glori- 
fied hetara re-encased in the flesh. Beautiful and 
cerebral, and free, she is the inspiration of sages 
and poets. Not hers the penalty of mortality. She 
is the mother of spirit-children; and Charmldes Is 
her kinsman. He Is more purely spiritual. Docile 
and enthusiastic, pupil and friend, his lovely pres- 
ence comforts and stays In those high altitudes of 
the mind where the garlands of passion shrivel to 
dust. 

We are not yet prepared for Hellenic ideals. 
Charmldes amongst us would be a dandified 
" high-brow," and Aspasla, " off-color." We 
would mar and crush and pervert her. And we 
would certainly " cut " her. We understand 
physiological passion, and we understand spiritual 
passion, but we are Intensely suspicious where one 
partakes of the elements of the other. It Is curi- 
ous that the greatest singer of spiritualized pas- 
sion should have been an American. Leaves of 
Grass, not Mademoiselle de Maiipin, is " the Gol- 
den Book of Spirit and Sense." Perhaps Whit- 
man was given to us because we most needed him. 

We need him more than ever for the emancipa- 
tion of man and the emancipation of passion. 
Every country, they say, has the government it 



88 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

deserves. We are governed by Woman. We 
cringe before her as slaves before the master. 
And, like slaves, we talk evil of her behind her 
back. And we adore her in false and hysterical 
fashion. The reason usually ascribed by foreign- 
ers for the truly anomalous position of woman in 
the United States is the scarcity of females among 
our early settlers. They haven't been scarce, how- 
ever, for a good many years. There have been 
plenty of them as long as / can remember. I would 
blame the Pilgrim Fathers. The essential in- 
decency of the Puritan mind is clearly exposed in 
the attitude of the American Adam toward the 
American Eve. 

We deify woman because we bestlalize passion. 
We place her on a pedestal, we forget she has a 
body, so as not to despise her. We worship her 
as a goddess, because we fear to degrade her as a 
mate. We protect her by preposterous laws, be- 
cause we distrust ourselves and her. We have not 
yet learned to love the body purely. We fail to 
discriminate between passion and vice. So dis- 
torted Is our vision, that sex in itself seems debas- 
ing. But the Instinct of sex is ineradicable. The 
goddess topples from the altar, if she does not 
descend voluntarily. 

Man is divine because he Is human. We are 
ashamed of that divinity. Out of that shame is 
born the sham of our Puritan morals and a mor- 
bidity of which we are hardly aware. We yield 



ADAM AND EVE 89 

to temptation surreptitiously, like bad monks. We 
dare not make sin beautiful. We make it ugly 
and coarse. And every time we react against our 
own vulgar trespasses, we prostrate ourselves be- 
fore the Good Woman who doesn't exist, and 
doesn't want to exist. We glory in groveling in 
the du5t at her feet. We give expression to the 
unhealthy sentiment that no man is good enough 
for a woman. When a prostitute slays one 
of her lovers, she Is beatified In the press. We 
refuse to admit that a woman can be really 
bad. 

I always thought It ungallant, if truthful, of 
Adam, to blame It all on the woman. But why 
go to the opposite extreme, and blame everything 
on the male ? There is a strongly masochistic ele- 
ment in the American attitude toward woman. 
The man who wheels a baby carriage for his sick 
wife deserves laudation — he Is a hero; but the 
man who assumes the domestic functions of the 
female unnecessarily Is a specimen from Krafft- 
Ebing. 

Elinor Glyn says that American men are like 
brothers or elderly aunts. Elinor has her flashes. 
The maleness of the average American is certainly 
not so Insistently felt as that of his cousin abroad. 
Externally, at least, there Is frequently a certain 
feminine strain In the American man. He is 
handsomer, more graceful, less strongly sexed. 
Abroad, where men dictate theatrical fashion, the 



90 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

Chorus Girl monopolizes the musical comedy 
stage. In an Amazon kingdom there would be 
only Chorus Boys. We have not reached that 
phase as yet, but undoubtedly the Chorus Boy Is 
already In the ascendant. 

Our women are more self-possessed, more ath- 
letic, and. If It must be said, more mannish than 
the Laura of Petrarch and the Gretchen of Faust. 
Such modifications must already affect In some 
subtle manner the relations between the sexes. 
They give rise to cycles of problems novel In the 
present stage of civilization. Perhaps the balance 
of power Is shifting. We have placed woman In 
the saddle: beware lest she take the reins! Some 
day we may be officially what we are already In 
essence, a matriarchy, swayed by the " mother 
right " of primitive races. Unless a radical re- 
adjustment takes place, the world may see the 
spectacle of an American Amazon Queen ruling a 
henpecked nation. 

One hope, however, remains to the Mere Male : 
the Eternal Woman. Yes, woman herself. For 
we are mistaken If we imagine that she looks up to 
the man who humiliates himself before her. She 
Is much too near the earth, too human, to find 
pleasure In the exalted position we force upon her. 
Nietzsche put the case rather strongly; too 
strongly, I think. It Is not the whip she craves, 
but the master. When an American woman has 
the opportunity of meeting a foreigner, she 



ADAM AND EVE 91 

usually marries him. His masterful masculinity, 
not his title, compels her attention. International 
marriages are often unfortunate, because the 
American woman, nursed in selfishness, lacks the 
worldly wisdom and graceful resignation of her 
less imperious sister. Nevertheless she Is glad to 
slip from her pedestal unnoticed, when she travels 
abroad. Accustomed to epicene adoration, she not 
infrequently falls an easy victim to aggressive 
maleness abroad. 

The American Girl in Europe reminds one of a 
young queen traveling incognito. But that is 
perilous, little girl, if you don't know the rules of 
the game ! The young German girl Is wiser than 
you in some things. She Is less self-possessed, but 
more self-reliant. She doesn't expect a man to 
carry all her bundles. And she is not afraid to go 
home unaccompanied, if need be. And when she 
goes out with a man, she will not permit him to 
pay for her as a rule. It isn't reasonable that 
the male should support the female before they 
are married. The young American Is expected to 
pay for the mere privilege of dining with a wo- 
man. Dear ladles, who read this, do not think 
that I would not gladly invite you to dinner. I 
object to the principle, not to the custom. The 
young German woman generally accepts no such 
favors as a matter of course. She knows that 
" give and take '* is the basis of every bargain. 
An unfair bargain demoralizes the gainer. She 



92 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

also knows that the law of the man is not the law 
of the maid. What's sauce for the gander isn't 
always sauce for the goose. 

Eve abroad knows that Adam Is polygamlstic; 
and that, if we wish to preserve the institution of 
matrimony we must provide safety valves for the 
man. One half of the world, we know, believes 
in polygamy. The other half practises it. The 
Koran sanctions, economy vetoes, a plurality of 
wives. Occidental nations are monogamic in 
theory, not in fact. 

The continental woman, as a rule, overlooks the 
extra-marital exploits of the husband. The neces- 
sity for this precaution is recognized officially only 
in the Code Napoleon. But if you talk to the 
wives confidentially, they will make startling ad- 
missions. I know a charming couple, somewhat 
advanced in years, whose married life is an idyl. 
With tender solicitude they read each other's 
wishes from their eyes. I was astonished, because 
I had been told that for many years the husband 
had spent half his income on a mistress. And the 
wife knew it, always. We had a heart-to-heart 
talk. 

" Where is she now? " I inquired. 

" She Is dead," the old lady answered. There 
was a trace of relief in her voice. 

"And she has had no successor?" 

" None. You see, he is getting older, and even 
before her death he had come back to me. He 



ADAM AND EVE 93 

loved me all the time; the other woman merely 
appealed to his senses. I am very happy now. I 
only regret the money he squandered on that — 
that woman." 

" Hush," I said, '' she Is dead. It Is only just 
that men should be more lavish with their mis- 
tresses than with their wives. The Scarlet Woman 
Is disinherited. Legally, socially, she Is defense- 
less. The wife Is privileged, fortified by the world. 
Surely the guerdon of sin Is scant In comparison." 

" Probably you are right," she replied. '' I be- 
gin to see life more steadily every year. We never 
speak of her, save as one speaks of a friend. He 
tries hard to make me forget, as well as forgive. 
I let him exert himself. I accept his little favors," 
she added, wistfully. " I tried hard enough to 
make him forget in the past, and — failed. I did 
not let him kiss me for many years." 

^* And now?" 

At this moment the husband came home from a 
late constitutional, bringing her flowers like some 
ancient Philemon to his Baucis, and tenderly 
kissed her behind the ear. If she had been an 
American woman, she would have dragged him to 
the divorce court years and years ago. And the 
late afternoon of their lives would have been sun- 
less and loveless. 

We often make a mess of marriage because we 
marry too young. We are In Indecorous haste to 
perpetuate the species. Marriage Invariably rubs 



94 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

the first bloom from the rose of romance. But 
sometimes, between sincere men and women, the 
flower of perfect understanding blooms more 
lovely in the place of the first impetuous passion. 
But the soil must be prepared for its growth. The 
inexperienced boy-husband and his girl-wife are 
too impatient. They will not wait for the soft 
tendrils to sprout. Leaf by leaf they pick the rose 
to pieces, and then, in petulant anger, desert the 
garden. 

Europe provides, for the husband, at least, an 
amorous education antedating his marriage. He 
needs lessons in sentiment, not in sensation. 
Kisses, bought and loveless, are insufiicient. The 
young iGerman generally has what is called '' a 
minor affair," Ein kleines Verhdltniss. One might 
call it a miniature marriage. The girl, usually 
some shopgirl, sincerely loves him. She does not 
expect him to marry her. And some day, she 
knows, she will lose him. He brings culture be- 
yond her station into her life. She teaches him 
the lesson of loving kindness. But for her, he 
would learn from the gutter the lesson of vice. 
She is the steward of his affection. She keeps it 
pure for the woman who will take her place. 
When he marries there will be tears, and not a 
little heartache. And then she, too, will marry, 
and will bring a trace of the refinement of her 
lover into the humbler home of the husband. 
The miniature marriage is at an end. None the 



ADAM AND EVE 95 

worse for their experience, the youth and his Ina- 
morata will each enter the major life. 

Do not misunderstand me. The standard of 
bourgeois morality is the same the world over. 
But we are all of us sinners. Only abroad, men 
trespass artistically. We are bunglers In sin. In 
Europe, however, the moral code is not indis- 
criminately applied. Genius is not compelled to 
wear the cloak of ready-made morals. There is 
a certain poet abroad; he Is very famous. I will 
not mention his name. Everybody knew that he 
was equally In love with his wife and with an 
actress of great reputation. Society respected his 
peculiar temperament, and invariably asked either 
the wife or the mistress when he was Invited. The 
mistress lived with him in town; the wife shared 
his country seat. It happened some years ago 
that both women about the same time whispered 
the tenderest secret Into his ear. That, I believe, 
is the way they put it In novels. When at last the 
fatal day had dawned, the poet Is said to have 
traveled hither and thither between his two abodes, 
to comfort both women in their hour of need. 
Berlin laughed, and forgave. 

Margarete Beutler, a woman of distinguished 
poetical gifts, frankly announced in an autobi- 
ographical sketch that she was temperamentally 
unfitted for permanent wedlock; and Gabriele 
Reuter, a Hypatia of letters, boldly advertised the 
birth of her extra-marital child. Both women 



96 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

command the respect of even respectability abroad. 
Europe has accepted still stranger erotic vagaries 
from genius. Not because she approves of sexual 
irregularity, but because she attaches no exagger- 
ated importance to purely personal physiological 
functions. Brain counts for more than conven- 
tional morals. Aphrodite's reputation in Greece 
was deplorable, but she nevertheless remained a 
goddess. Mercury was a thief, but divine honors 
were not therefore withheld. Those in whom the 
divine spark glows and burns, must be forgiven 
many frailties that would be unpardonable in mor- 
tals not so inspired. Their genius, in turn, casts 
the glamor of romance over the squalid facts of 
existence. 



CHAPTER IX 

SOME WOMEN 

I HAVE never loitered with prurient interest in 
the love-marts of the world. I have been intoxi- 
cated with the glitter and glare of Broadway, but 
even as a boy I never glanced twice, except in pity, 
at the venders of passion. Therefore have I little 
to tell of the Friedrichstrasse at night. I distin- 
guish, of course, between the demi-mondame and 
the scarlet-robed daughter of Lilith who has come 
to us through the ages. The wisdom of the cen- 
turies, ironic, yet wistful, distorts the curve of her 
smile. Her eyebrows quiver like serpents. Her 
tunic is more precious than purple, for it is dyed 
with the heart-blood of emperors; and her tiara is 
jeweled with the songs of the world. Semiramis, 
Sappho and Catherine the Great, her lurid incarna- 
tions, flame up against the horizon. Scarlet and 
splendid, she holds in her hand the jewel of death- 
less yearning. She is begotten of Heaven and 
Hell. 

There are born three types of the female — the 
Eternal Harlot, the Eternal Woman, and the Wo- 
man in Scarlet. 

• ;*' 97 



98 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

The Eternal Harlot bears the fragile vial of 
transitory delight. She Is all of the earth, earthy. 

Less robust, still of the earth, but spiritualized 
and transfigured, mistress and mother, the Eternal 
Woman brings loving kindness and peace Into the 
world. Unlike the Woman In Scarlet, she has no 
aspirations beyond the Race. Unlike the demi- 
mondaine's, her eyes are set toward the future. 
Through her, evolution works Its indomitable 
will. 

The harlot Is woman debased; she Is woman 
without cosmic purpose. The Woman In Scarlet 
Is woman endowed with an alien purpose, striving 
to transcend the limits of sex. But sin and song 
and dominion cannot appease in her heart the cry 
for the child and the legitimate functions of wife- 
hood; barren and sad and dissatisfied, she passes 
Into the night. 

I have always viewed Venus pertpatetica with 
compassion and horror. And yet, are not we who 
sell our souls more despicable than those who sell 
only their bodies? The woman of the street pre- 
serves her authentic emotions for her lover. She 
keeps hej* heart unscathed of the amorous traffic. 
The writer, however, cannot give less than his 
soul. He transmits something of his real self in- 
variably into his work, even if lovelessly under- 
taken. Try as you may, you can't help being sin- 
cere, sometimes. 

The ^Esthetic School, conscious of the infamy 



SOME WOMEN 99 

of this indecent exposure, diadems Pose with the 
Castilian wreath. But that is, in itself, a pose. 
We can, after all, draw only upon the resources 
within us; and for literary purposes there is no ink 
like heart blood. Le style c^est I'homme; and all 
books are confessions. 

But that is why the Friedrichstrasse at night 
sickens my heart. In the daytime the Friedrich- 
strasse is a highway of commerce. When night 
draws down her curtains spangled with constella- 
tions, the face of the street changes swiftly as by 
the stroke of Merlin's magic wand. The mask 
of humanity falls; the werewolf appears, savage 
and growling. We are borne along the walking 
love-mart of Berlin. 

I could tell strange things of the Friedrich- 
strasse, of uncouth passions and fantastic desires. 
This is indeed a carnival of vice. Here unclean 
phantoms keep their tryst. Curious caprices; un- 
canny suggestions; leprous faces and leering lips. 
Sin in strange mummery grins at us. Lechery in 
divers shapes makes indecent grimaces. Every- 
where the phosphorescent glow of an ancient civ- 
ilization. On Broadway I have seen only its pal- 
lid reflection. 

If you carelessly glanced at this girl you would 
not imagine that she is really Salmacis mincing his 
steps as of old. Gray, pale wraiths of Greek 
things walk in the shadow of Berlin. 

Hush! I will be silent, and chain those dis- 



100 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

quieting visions in the remotest cerebral cavern. 
I shall shut my eyes to that unholy procession, sus- 
taining the torch of unchastity and lighting the 
temples of lust. 

In the Moulin Rouge and in Arcadia, both not 
far from the Friedrichstrasse, vice stalks in a 
dress suit. There are cafes in the Friedrich- 
strasse where its companion is murder. Where 
lust Is king, aristocracy joins hands with the slums. 
But my kingdom is not of this world. Love and 
the women I sing dwell In another region. 

Ermengarde, for instance, lived in Charlotten- 
burg. Charlottenburg is to Berlin what Harlem is 
to New York. Ermengarde Is to me what Frau 
von Stein was to Goethe. We have no such figures 
as Frau von Stein in America. No text-book tells 
of Longfellow's and Whittier's extra-marital 
loves. Poe's love affairs were hopelessly Platonic, 
and Whitman's children a bluff! We shall never 
have a full-blooded art until we develop the 
liaison. 

As sounds from a music-box, women's faces 
float in swift succession from the secret chambers 
of my brain. I beg your pardon if I have falsi- 
fied literary history to round out a figure of speech. 
My relations with Ermengarde were far more in- 
nocuous than Goethe's with Frau von Stein. We 
never were sweethearts ; but love, like a spark, was 
always ready to leap into flame. Those were de- 
lightful days, and delicious — afternoon teas ! 



SOME WOMEN loi 

Dear Ermengarde, you were terribly knowing. 
One could talk to you of all things. You knew 
everybody; you had a man's understanding. Yet, 
how womanly you were! You were fond of me, 
more than you dared confess even to yourself. But 
you didn't take me quite seriously, and you knew 
I was fickle. When we went to the theater to- 
gether, and you were gowned In your most splen- 
did attire — I remember that dress overlaid with 
silver! — I seemed to myself like a page of mediae- 
val days watching a band of players at the side of 
his queen. And sometimes when her interest in 
the play flagged, she softly squeezed his hand. 
But the heart of the little page fluttered always, so 
that he heard no word of what was said on the 
stage. 

And there was Madeleine, supple, strong and 
superb. I think, Ermengarde, you were a little 
jealous of her. I loved to sit with Madeleine and 
her husband. We had our coffee in the garden 
room, the three of us. We discussed art, and love, 
and her prospective admirers. Madeleine was at 
heart a Madonna — a Madonna wedded to Don 
Juan. A Madonna, moreover, who had absorbed, 
intellectually, the philosophy of Don Juan. When 
a man stares at a woman, she said, he uncon- 
sciously pays her a compliment. Like the knee of 
the faithful reverently bended before the mon- 
strance, his attitude is a form of worship. And 
every kiss, even If forced from reluctant lips, is a 



102 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

prayer at the shrine of Astarte, a virile affirma- 
tion of the supremacy of the sex. Such frankness 
would have been unbecoming in a descendant of 
the Pilgrim Fathers. It was refreshing in this 
glorious daughter of Eve. There was always be- 
tween us, too, the potentiality of affection. The 
European atmosphere is surcharged with sex at- 
traction. In America the ticker is the substitute 
for the heart. 

As I write this, certain brain vibrations shape 
themselves into the enigmatic smile of Francesca. 
If Mona Lisa had come to life, she would have 
made your body her mansion! You are somber 
like her, and mysterious; but, unlike her, you ar- 
ticulate the meaning of your existence. We might 
have been very dear to each other, had things 
been different. You know there are women with 
whom, for some curious reason, I feel as intimate 
as though we had been sweethearts in an earlier 
incarnation. You are one of these women. There 
is nothing petty in you. With a miraculous pa- 
tience you listen to the confessions of others. You 
are a mother-confessor who knows no frown ; only 
blessings and balm flow from your strangely curved 
lips. 

I never quite understood your interest in Aho- 
libah. Aholibah, to be sure, was intellectual, even 
brilliant, but her eyes were weary from too much 
loving. She was always seeking God, but her 
temples tumbled, being built in the flesh. I told 



SOME WOMEN 103 

her that I was sadly In need of some grande pas- 
sion. " Give me," I declaimed, ^' an unrequited 
love! " She promised; but nothing came of it. I 
saw too little of her, perhaps. Our ways there- 
after were like two geometrical lines that Inter- 
sect at infinity only. 

Life in Berlin was so strangely colored for me, 
spiced with bewildering passions. The New 
World seems stale after the potions, some venom, 
some wine, quaffed from the cup of the Old. I 
wonder if you will ever read this, Marlon, strang- 
est and shyest of all my loves. I shall never for- 
get that evening we met at the house of , but 

I must be careful; he, I am certain, will see what 
I write. And how I read some passionate verses, 
and how my voice trembled with real emotion, and 
how involuntarily you lowered your eyes. And 
no one knew that every word of my mouth was 
aimed at your heart like an arrow. I wasn't sure 
you knew, except when we said good-bye. Then 
I said — I forget what I said. You will remember, 
being a woman! How sweetly you smiled when 
again we met. And then that curious letter, preg- 
nant with strange remorse ! I wonder why. Per- 
haps it is well we parted forever. Exquisite emo- 
tions are not easily duplicated; the heart is more 
sensitive than the photographer's plate. 

And then your namesake swam into my ken, 
and again love wrote its purple meaning across the 
sky. This Marion, too, loved me dearly. She 



104 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

bravely tried to conceal the truth from me. But 
when I suspected her kinship, however remote, 
with the throngs that people the Friedrichstrasse, 
the wine of passion turned to gall. I was cruel to 
her, uncharitable; and I know that some day I 
shall be punished for this. 

Valeria was her successor — strange, morbid, 
mad, hysterical. Her lover was a demon — 
morphine. There was no emotion, bizarre and 
unrestful, with which her soul would not vibrate. 
Above all, she loved pain. Her love for me 
was idolatrous. I cannot describe my emotion 
for her. Passion was curiously mixed with amaze- 
ment. 

I was often stunned and surprised abroad. I 
met so many people out of my own books ! I had 
never known that they really existed. I had never 
met them at Martin's. They had hidden their 
faces from me In America. Yet, here they were. 
I recognized the type. They made me feel creepy. 
I understood why my critics had objected to them. 
I wouldn't like to pass my life amongst them. I 
am not sure whether I ought not to have " cut " 
them. In the purple nights of Berlin I saw for the 
first time that I had always been a realist. I was 
sorry for the figments of my brain when I beheld 
them splendidly clothed in the flesh. 

I was most sorry for you, little girl, — I don't 
remember your name, — although I have written 
a poem to you : 



SOME WOMEN 105 

O little siren of the rose-white skin, 
Reared to strange 7nusic and to stranger sin, 
With scornful lips that move to no man's plea, 
O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 

Beneath long lashes, downcast eyes and coy. 

Yet uninitiate to no secret joy! 

O hud burst open ere her day begun, 

The virghi and the strumpet blent in one! 

Come close to me! Lay your small hand in mine, 

And drink the music of my words like wine. 

And let me touch your little breasts that swell 

With joy remembered where her kisses fell. 

Ah! she whose wise caressive fingers strike 

Your heart-strings and the cithara alike! 

By what love-potion is your passion fanned, 

What is the magic of that wary hand? 

What is the secret of her strange caress, 

Fierce tortured kisses, or the tenderness 

That woman gives to woman — flame or snow? 

I, too, can kiss or bruise you; you shall know 

That love like mine is delicate as hers, 

Or madder still, to 7nadder passion stirs. 

That shall consume you like some fiery sea. 

O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 

Or is it song that sets your blood on fire?. 
Behold in me no novice to the lyre. 
Who is this woman Sappho? I can sing 
Like her of Eros, Yea, each voiceless thing, 



io6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

The very rocks of Mytilene's strand 
Shall be made vocal at your sweet command. 
Hers but the cooing of the Lesbian lutes. 
Mine every passion in the heart that roots. 
Albeit your sweetness lives in Sappho's song, 
Her love is barren . . . and the years are long. 
And how she sang and how she loved and erred, 
Only by moonsick women will be heard. 
The lyric thunder that my hand has hurled 
Shall ring with resonant music through the world, 
Quickening the blood in every lover's breast. 
And then your beauty on my glory's crest 
Shall ride, a goddess, to eternity — 
O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 

Unscathed in Love's dominion I have been. 
And still a sceptic kissed the mouth of Sin, 
Love seemed the dreariest of all things on earth. 
Until my passion filled your heart with mirth! 
Like frightened bird my cynic wisdom flies 
Before the cruel candor of your eyes. 
As for sweet rain a valley sick with drouth. 
Thus thirsts my love for your indifferent mouth; 
And still your thoughts are wandering to the dell 
Where Sappho walks and where her minions 

dwell. 
Be then, of maidens most corrupt, most chaste, 
The one delight that I shall never taste! 
And through the dreary aons yet unborn. 
The love of you shall rankle like a thorn. 



SOME WOMEN 107 

Leave one last thrill for my sad heart to crave 
In the ennui of heaven and the grave. 
Incite my passion; my embraces flee — 
And never, never, never come to me! 

listen, listen to my heart-heaf s call! 
Aught else I say, it is not true at all. 

She has her maidens whom her soft ways woo. 
And they to her are no less dear than you. 
For your dear sake I gladly fling aside 
Laurels and loves! A beggar stripped of pride, 

1 only know I need you more than she — 
O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 

Your arms were lilies, you were frail, childlike; 
but your eyes peered with demoniacal passion into 
ancient abysses glittering with putrefaction. Dear 
Little Maid of Sappho, how I might have loved 
you ! And ah ! that feverish night half drowned 
in champagne, with the sinister suggestions of an 
alien Aphrodite. I was not strong to save you. 
Besides, I had no time. That sounds very heart- 
less. I am afraid I am too egocentric to be easily 
diverted into the labyrinth of another's soul. Yet 
the thought of you, little girl, fills me with a vague 
unrest. You might have been my fate: you were 
hardly an episode. Perhaps we shall meet again. 
But you will then be beyond salvation. 

We often speak with envy of the romance of 
forgotten days. Yet if, like the Yankee Knight at 



io8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

King Arthur's court, we were to drop backward 
through time, we should probably find life squalid 
and empty of roses. Romance dwells not without, 
but within. The rose of romance thrives only 
miserably in the heart of the American woman. 
The two-headed monster of self-consciousness 
and self-seeking chills its bloom with icy breath. 
Americans are ashamed of their emotions. 
Europeans are proud of them. 

Of the women I met abroad, Thusnelda, above 
all others, knew the magic that transmutes the 
dross of life into the pure gold of adventure. 
Every one she met became a tree in her landscape f 
of dreams. She had a genius for being unhappy. 
The common bread of life became ambrosia in her 
hands if only she could moisten it with tears. She 
was distinctly a blossom of a civilization grown 
weary even of pleasure. She would have been 
morbid, not to say pathological, had she been an 
American. But in Europe the strange complex- 
ities of her temperament were not at variance with 
the complex and colorful life about her. 

Thusnelda preferred a wreath of thorns to a 
wreath of roses. I am sure, Thusnelda, you will 
not take it amiss if I quote from your letters. You 
wrote some things that I should love to have 
written. I shall tear your golden words out of the 
jaws of oblivion. Who knows, perhaps this will 
make them immortal. I would have no objection 
to your printing my letters. I would regard it 



SOME WOMEN 109 

as a compliment. But I am a professional writer, 
and you are not. I cannot afford to write beauti- 
ful letters. I write only for publication. Besides, 
in this country, the honeyed sonnets of lovers are 
turned Into nooses to strangle their authors in 
divorce suits and actions for breach of promise! 

I remember the evening Albertus Introduced us. 
I knew how madly you adored him, and that his 
heart was a stone. And how much satisfaction 
you got out of your misplaced affection. And how 
I fell sick, and how kindly you nursed me, sus- 
pecting perhaps the possibility of a tragic affec- 
tion. 

I am afraid you idealized me, as you idealized 
all things. I know that in appearance I am not 
very poetic. I wear my hair short. I am a well- 
preserved young man, notwithstanding my twenty- 
five years, but I don't look the poet. You are 
right: I should have been dark. But how well 
you said it. I think it was in your second letter: 

** When God made you^ you wrote, '' He 
willed to make you dark-complexioned and dark of 
hairy like some Italian or an Assyrian prince. But 
seeing that your hair was golden, he made your 
heart black! But no, I lie! It is more wicked to 
call you evil than any dream of evil that ever your 
delicate soul has conceived. 

*^ How lovely are even the demons of your In- 
ferno! Can you help it if your roses are drops of 



no CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

blood, and your songs poison-flowers? Ah! Those 
demons! They have stood by my cradle, too, and 
often I hearkened to their voices when the wind 
whistled around the walls of my paternal castle, 
Comraded by them I drifted upon the river of my 
youth. Sometimes they smile upon me out of the 
deep eyes of my lover. They will hover over my 
grave and chant an uncouth melody over this pas- 
sionate heart of mine, that ever yearned for roses, 
and ever kissed the thorns! 

"/ am fond of you: I can never love you. I 
can only love the setting sun, when far away he 
crimsons the sky with yearning and with blood; or 
the perfume of jessamine; or the cry of the wild 
heron fleeing from autumnal days into sunnier 
regions; or the soul of Albertus Magnus, where 
sunset and odor and the freedom of wild things 
are woven into one. But you should not have sent 
me those poems. They knock at the door of my 
heart and whisper, and plaintively call to me 
through the night.'^ .... 

I had not been interested In that woman until I 
received her letter. She had made a poem of our 
commonplace meeting. Prose could not nestle in 
the folds of her garments; neither could sin soil 
her feet. Everything she touched became strange 
and romantic. 

We subsequently spent a happy evening to- 
gether. Thusnelda bared her soul to me, and I 



SOME WOMEN iii 

am afraid I was a little shocked by some of the 
things she said. But that evening, charming as 
it was, had not prepared me for the following let- 
ter. In Thusnelda's imagination, our meeting had 
blossomed forth into a flower, glorious and 
golden; and when I re-read her letter I knew she 
was right. For there are miracles everywhere. 
But we have eyes that see not, and ears that hear 
not. The voice of Romance is audible in America 
only to poets and artists, and even they are a little 
ashamed of being different from others. This is 
the letter: 

'' Oh Night of all Nights! Like a fairy tale, so 
different, so miraculous and so strange! Why do 
you peer so questioningly into my world? Are 
your eyes so darkened that you can no longer look 
upon nudity, and turn half terrified from the 
naked soul? In my Kingdoin there are only souls, 
naked and free and pure as in Paradise. Not that 
Paradise where the forbidden tree rustles prurient 
suggestions ; but in that woodland evergreen where 
the gods walk with men, and beget a pozverful race 
to which no Eden is out of reach, and no precipice 
too deep to be sounded. 

^^ All that happens in the name of beauty and 
of greatness must he great and beautiful forever. 
We must he what the God in us determines us to 
be. The riddle of the Universe is child's play if 
once we know nature is beauty, beauty nature; 



112 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

and if we carry God in our hearts, our lives will 
he prayer. But to pray is to yearn, to hope, to 
thank. These things I can give to you. Never ask 
more of me, hut remember that I am the hand- 
maid and lover of one who shall never touch me, 
and never love me. My love for him is sacred, 
and, like the host, may not he divided. Pray for 
me!'* ... J 

It will be supremely difficult for the healthy 
American animal to comprehend sympathetically 
the complexities of this woman. Neither can we 
understand that the non-attainment of desire may 
be more strangely seductive to Imaginative na- 
tures than brutal and often unlovely realization. 
I confess that I myself was sorely puzzled at first 
by Thusnelda; but surely she has made my life 
richer and deeper, and unlocked for me gardens 
of spiritual passion, stranger and fiercer than rap- 
tures that root in the flesh. And I must also admit 
that I have had strong revulsions of feeling 
against her, and that on the whole I am glad that 
she will be unique In my life. 

But surely Europe has strange allurements and 
secrets for barbarians from overseas. 

Let me here set down the story of Gwendolen, 
the lovely bride of my childhood. We had been 
lovers since I was six and she was four. My love 
for her, I admit, was not my first romantic attach- 
ment, but the only one the perfume of which has 



SOME WOMEN 113 

clung to me through the years. Before I met her, 
I believe, I wanted to marry our janitor's daugh- 
ter, the family cook — good old camel! — and a 
beautiful princess forty years my senior, whom 
George Meredith has made the heroine of one of 
his novels, and who was a friend of my mother. 
That was many years ago, but the fire In her hair 
and In her heart will never go out. I speak of 
Helene von Racovitza. 

Gwendolen had lovely brown ringlets. She was 
the most beautiful child I have ever seen. As I 
look upon her picture now, I clearly see that she 
was one of those elfin creatures, who, like Peter 
Pan, cannot abide on earth. We were parted 
when I was ten. I crossed the seas. We seldom 
wrote to each other. And then, some years later, 
she died. Strange to say, her death hardly stirred 
me. But when I went abroad, recently, for the 
first time since my childhood, I called on her 
mother, and then my youthful love came back to 
me with curious insistence. The mother, sweet 
woman, opened a little parcel of the dead girl's 
hair, and told me how Gwendolen had often 
spoken of me. When I was expected at the house, 
she had always asked for a new pinafore and 
looked at herself In the mirror, anxiously asking: 
" Do you think that he will like me in this? " 

Never do we more poignantly realize our hu- 
man Impotence than when we vainly beat against 
the gray gate of eternity, striving to wrest the 



114 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

wraith of one we love from the Iron embrace of 
the relentless void. The winged seraphs of heaven 
have carried her away to a distant Alden where 
perchance Annabel Lee welcomes her as a play- 
mate. While these fancies flitted through my 
brain, the Jehu of my taxicab sat grinning at his 
wheel. Every minute of my pain was registered by 
the click of his meter. Every tear of my heart was 
an added obolus In his pocket. 

From out the sea of faces of women In scarlet, 
of all my loves, curious and brilllant-hued, this 
one child's memory still abides beckoning to me 
from the Old World. Her little ghost will never 
see this. She will never know how tenderly I 
think of her. But can she really be dead? When 
the thought of her, even now, almost brings tears 
to my eyes ? Maeterlinck Is right. No one Is dead, 
who still lives In the hearts of others. 

But, good folks, accept my apologies. This has 
nothing to do with Europe. 



CHAPTER X 

INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 

It Is queer to have anybody ask you whether 
you have seen your grandmother's statue, and to 
confess that you have not. That Is exactly what 
happened to me when I came to Berlin. Edwina 
VIereck had died many years before I was born. 
I had read of her beauty, and I had discovered, 
among my father's papers, some diaries penned by 
her hand. We had pictures of her at home, but I 
never had as much personal Interest in my grand- 
mother as I have had in Helen of Troy Town. 
But when I stood within the Royal Playhouse at 
Berlin before her loveliness hewn In marble. It 
seemed to me as though I felt for a moment upon 
my forehead the Impress of her lips. 

I was almost convinced that In the foyer, which 
had once re-echoed with her praise, I met the ghost 
of Edwina VIereck. I feel akin to her now. I 
can almost see her as she appeared on the stage. 
She Is said to have been most wonderful In Schil- 
ler's Turandot, which nobody plays nowadays, 
when she challenged the beholder to look upon 
her beauty and not lose his reason. And there is a 

115 



ii6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

poem, I have forgotten by whom, in which '' der 
Viereck wiinderschones Haupt'^ is recounted in 
rapturous phrases. I was elated at first by that 
laurel-wreathed bust. It isn't everybody whose 
grandmother is immortalized in marble at the 
Royal Playhouse in Berlin. 

Yet there was something saddening to me in 
the vision. Every statue is a memento of the 
evanescence of human life. There is something 
pathetic in the smile frozen in marble, while the 
beautiful lips of the woman herself are choked 
with dust and corruption. Besides, I was a little 
jealous that her image should smile upon others 
as it smiled upon me, her grandson. I could ap- 
preciate why the children of famous people often 
feel injured when strangers write understandingly 
of their parents. This curious egotism even 
prompts them sometimes to belittle a great man 
departed, if only to indicate that their knowledge 
of him is more intimate than the world's. 

We would be shocked if we saw the bleaching 
bones of our immediate progenitors exposed to 
the gaze of the many in a museum of anatomy. 
Are we not humanly justified, therefore, if we re- 
sent an autopsy of their soul? If Mrs. Browning 
had been my mother, I would not like to listen to 
other people's interpretations of her passional 
sonnets. And yet I am fully aware that all art is 
a form of exhibitionism. 

In the Harvard Psychological Laboratory I 



INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 117 

once saw little white mice revolving in a circle, 
crazily, without pause, like dancing dervishes. 
Generations ago, Asiatic cunning had destroyed 
the sense of equilibrium in their ancestors to make 
toys of them for the delectation of almond-eyed 
women. So these, too, turn ever in a vicious circle, 
imagining, no doubt, perpetual gyration the 
proper and logical state of mouse. Even thus we, 
I sometimes fancy, obey not our own volition, but 
the monstrous caprice of an alien will. There is 
an irresistible — scientists would say compulsory 
— impulse that urges our pens and animates 
our chisels. We flout our nakedness in the mar- 
ket-place, and turn our grandmothers into 
copy! 

My mother's father, Wilhelm Viereck, was the 
founder of the German Theater in San Francisco. 
My father's mother was Edwina Viereck. Never- 
theless, I have not inherited from my grandpar- 
ents any instinctive love for the stage, although I 
have been in intimate relation with the theater all 
my life. Our theatrical conditions are hardly 
calculated to foster such a love. The drama in 
America is the lowest of the arts. She is the 
handmaid of the mimic propensity inherited by 
us from our simian sires. Theatricalism has 
chained the Muse to the wheel of its motor. 
Plays are written to order. The author's name 
hardly appears on the program. 

I have never been one of those who place the 



ii8 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

drama on the uppermost rung of the ladder of art. 
A poem, a statue, a picture is wonderful, each in 
itself. It needs no interpreters. It summons no 
other art or artifice to its aid. The drama de- 
pends for its support on various scaffoldings, al- 
though the great dramas of Shakespeare and 
iEschylus are no less effective in the closet than 
on the stage. The little dramas of contemporary 
American playwrights, like fairy-gold when the 
charm is withdrawn, are tatters and rags if di- 
vorced from the footlights. The great dramatists 
have written to express themselves. We write to 
express others, usually actors of inferior mental 
caliber. Shakespeare garbed the body of the 
Muse with new splendor. We, with rare excep- 
tions, manufacture dramatic tinsel to cover up the 
mental and physical deficiencies of some over- 
advertised female. 

In Shakespeare's days the mimes were called 
" shadows.'* The substance, the play, remained 
after their exit. In America to-day the play is 
the shadow. We have no brains for abstractions 
either in politics or aesthetics. We are swayed 
solely by the personality of the actor. Julia Mar- 
lowe is more real to us than Shakespeare himself. 
We place the shadow above the substance. In 
America the playwright Is successful if he adapts 
himself to the actor. Abroad the actor Is success- 
ful If he adapts himself to the playwright. Abroad 
they have great dramas and great actors. We 



INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 119 

have no dramas. And we develop not actors, but 
virtuosi. 

There are many theaters in Berlin, — I don't 
know how many. The royal theaters, being bul- 
warks of conservatism, are not regarded seriously 
by the critics. The interest of the elect centers 
around the two great rival playhouses of Brahms 
and of Reinhardt, the Lessing Theater and the 
Deutsche Theater. Brahms stands for realism, 
Reinhardt for everything else. Brahms has dis- 
covered Ibsen for Germany. Reinhardt is a cere- 
bral Belasco. Belasco wrings our hearts. Rein- 
hardt excites our brains. Germany looks to him 
for curious and gorgeous intellectual experiments. 
Reinhardt has discovered Shakespeare, and, of 
late, he discovered Goethe. Or, to be more pre- 
cise, he has rediscovered the classics. He takes 
Faust or A Midsummer Night's Dream and trans- 
lates the language of centuries gone into the lan- 
guage of the twentieth century. His Faust is a 
modern. His Romeos and his Juliets are our con- 
temporaries. He makes no impious attempt to 
superimpose his own meanings upon those of the 
author, but he strikingly interprets and brilliantly 
illuminates him. 

I am not surprised that Berlin refused to accept 
iBeerbohm Tree's dazzling but superficial versions 
of Shakespeare. Sothern would probably meet 
with a similar disastrous fate. The Germans are 
the greatest interpreters of Shakespeare. They 



I20 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

are In sympathy with him. They understand him 
— all of him. I never understood Shakespeare until 
I had seen King Lear and As You Like It staged 
by Relnhardt and Felix Hollander, his able as- 
sistant. There Is no nuance they permit to escape 
them. They Interpret alike the lovely and the 
coarse. They discover even In the plays some- 
thing of the spirit of the mysterious Sonnets. 
There are moments when Mr. W. H. flits across 
the stage. The smile of the Shakespeare bust 
seems less enigmatic than of yore, his personality 
less Inscrutable and less distant, after we have 
caught glimpses of his face in that playhouse of 
Relnhardt's. 

Relnhardt employs a revolving stage, consisting 
of several sections. Each of these sections is a 
stage In Itself. Only one at a time Is seen by the 
audience. This arrangement enables the stage 
manager to shift his scenes with Incredible swift- 
ness. Shakespeare thereby regains the spontaneity 
which he loses when the scenes are torn out of 
their logical artistic sequence by the requirements 
of modern stage-craft. Relnhardt sometimes per- 
mits the stage to rotate with the curtain up, re- 
vealing a succession of pictures displaying the 
characters in their simultaneous actions. We see 
how, behind the scenes, they carry out the poet's 
intentions. Thus we visualize the action, as it 
must have evolved in the brain of Shakespeare. 

Adjoining the Deutsche Theater Relnhardt has 



INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 121 

reared a shrine to art — with a capital A. The 
Chamber-plays (Kammerspiele) are to the drama 
what chamber music Is to the opera. The little 
theater housing the chamber-plays is a jewel-box 
lined with silk. Everything Is subdued and costly. 
Costumed attendants silently hand you the pro- 
gram. - Prices are almost prohibitive. The intel- 
lectual middle classes are barred with triple brass 
from this holy of holies. The elect go to the 
Chamber-plays as reverently as one goes to church. 
Sometimes the silence becomes almost audible. 

Strange women in strange garbs, and uncouth 
men with curious beards and long hair, the Super- 
men's Brigade, are here assembled in solemn con- 
clave with the aristocracy of birth and finance. 
There are furs, and antique brooches, wristbands 
serpentine and suggestive, shimmering velvets and 
rustling silks. The faces of the beholders are 
placid. Aloof, Intellectual, calm, they analyze the 
performance. Emotion Is suppressed. No ap- 
plause is permitted. The Intellectual pabulum 
presented at the Chamber-plays is distinctly haut- 
gout. We know what awaits us. We must not 
be surprised at anything. In this assemblage 
Stirner Is a truism, Nietzsche passe. They would 
listen with imperturbable intellectual hauteur to 
stage adaptations from the medical data of Mag- 
nus HIrschfeld and Havelock Ellis. 

The actors are men and women endowed with 
brains. They have a serious Interest in art. Act- 



122 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

Ing to them Is more than " business." They are 
all individualities with the stamp of genius, who 
willingly submerge their egos in the harmonious 
whole. Wherever Relnhardt rules, intellectual 
values are at a premium. Style determines des- 
tinies. Bernard Shaw thrives in his care. The 
Chamber-Play House is the citadel of the bizarre. 
It is a hot-house for exotic genius, a mansion of 
many moods. Within its confine poets may safely 
play with intellectual lightning. The psychologist 
may with impunity empty his vials of pestilential 
bacilli. 

This public is Immune against every mental 
disease. Unlike the naive audiences of our Ameri- 
can play-houses, we find here grown men who have 
passed safely through the ailments of intellectual 
Immaturity. Schnltzler's orgasmic Reigen leaves 
them unstartled. The hysterical Greeks of Hugo 
von Hofmannsthal, that brilliant young Viennese, 
arouse a responsive chord in their breasts. They 
smile contemptuously at Max Halbe's Jugend — 
not a single character in that play might have 
been lifted from Krafft-Eblng's Psychopathia 
Sexualis. But they accept at their proper value 
Wedekind's dramatic grotesques. They appre- 
ciate Friihlin^s Erwachen. 

Let me tell you about Friihlin^s Erwachen 
(Springs Awakening). Wedekind, its author, is 
two-fifths a clown and three-fifths a genius. He 
is peculiar, bizarre, uneven. But in Friihling's 



INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 123 

Erwachen he has produced a masterpiece, because 
the subject, puberty, is in tune with his unbalanced 
genius. His individual mood for once coincides 
with a world mood. 

Wedekind's play, the Salome of Wilde, Barriers 
Peter Pan, and Shaw's Casar and Cleopatra are 
to my, mind the four representative plays of the 
century. 

Peter Pan embodies the imperishable longing 
for eternal youth ; being very young, he is conscious 
of the insufferable burthen of years upon the 
shoulders of the race. For in youth, as Words- 
worth knew, we are still close to the infinite. He 
stands upon the beginning of an arch in the bridge 
of time spanning the void between being and not- 
being. His backward glance more surmises than 
sees glimpses of chains unending. Casar and 
Cleopatra is the supreme expression of sophistica- 
tion. Shaw's Caesar is the Superman conscious of 
his part in the world's evolution. He attains 
through cerebration what Peter Pan knows by in- 
stinct. Salome is the gorgeous encasement of 
morbid beauty and misdirected desire. The 
theme of Wedekind's Friihling's Erwachen is uni- 
versally human. The dramatist unfolds before 
our eyes puberty with its pure and ecstatic affec- 
tions and its curious sensual nightmares. Wilde, 
w^th the unfailing veracity of the great poet, has 
doomed Salome in his play, as she is doomed in the 
process of evolution. Normal humanity, of 



124 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

which Wedeklnd's youthful hero, Melchior, is a 
typical incarnation, overcomes the perils besetting 
its path. Wedeklnd's hero dallies with death, as 
we all dally with death, but in the end life is tri- 
umphant. 

The supreme moment In Wedeklnd's play is the 
scene in the graveyard, where the boy wavers be- 
tween life and death. His old playfellow, who 
had blown out his brains, stands there with his 
head under his arm, preaching the doctrine of con- 
tentment in Nirvana. At this moment there 
appears Life, a gentleman with a mask, cynical, 
cruel and lavish and kind. He orders the dead 
boy to return to the grave, and declares that the 
philosophy of resignation is the philosophy of sour 
grapes. With fine and healthy cynicism he invites 
Melchior to supper. " After what I have done," 
Melchlor exclaims, " no supper can bring peace to 
my soul." " That," remarks the gentleman, " de- 
pends on the supper." They go out together. Life 
and the boy, deserting the tombs for the banquet. 
The dead boy takes his head under his arm and 
resignedly returns to his coffin, murmuring to him- 
self, " Now I shall raise my tombstone, which 
that clumsy chap has upset, warm my hands in cor- 
ruption and smile. ..." 

In the history of dramatic literature there is 
worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with 
the finale of Wedeklnd's play only the graveyard 
scene in Hamlet. But it is not the sort of thing 



INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 125 

to which the Tired Business Man — that atrocious 
bogey raised whenever Art lifts her head in the 
American theater — would repair for a tonic. 

The intellectual stamp dooms a play to failure 
in America. The absence of it dooms it to failure 
abroad. Of course, The Merry Widow is an im- 
portation from Europe. And even abroad, I ad- 
mit, the Merry Widow waltz was more popular 
than the dance of Salome, But a distinction is 
made between entertainment and art. We cater 
only to entertainment. And if we have an idea, 
we attempt to disguise the intellectual germ in a 
thick layer of saccharine sentiment and theatrical 
clap-trap. Mentality is written over the stage 
door abroad. Cerebral, restless, the German mind 
seeks ever for new spheres of expression. Thus, 
the late Meta Illing, a distinguished and beautiful 
actress, endeavored to speak to her compatriots 
through the medium of English. Her English 
Theater was intended primarily for the Germans, 
not for English and American visitors, and was pat- 
ronized by the Kaiser. If some manager were to 
put on The Sunken Bell in Chinese he would like- 
wise find an interested audience, at least in Ber- 
lin. Goethe's Iphigenia was played in Esperanto 
under the direction of Emanuel Reicher. There 
is everywhere the desire to conquer new ter- 
ritory by shattering the barriers of foreign 
tongues. A tendency toward universality is 
conspicuous. 



126 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

Frau Dumont, of Diisseldorf, has attempted to 
purge the drama with its eternal problems from 
purely local associations. She has abolished deco- 
ration, and everything merely temporal or limiting 
the message of art. There are no properties, no 
scenery at all. Her background consists merely of 
an immense sheet of linen, sometimes with chro- 
matic borders, and illuminated from behind with 
simple, dominant colors defining the basic mood of 
the scene. There are no footlights, nothing to dis- 
tract the attention from the words of the poet. 
Frau Dumont's method should be tremendously 
effective in staging the mystic plays of Maeter- 
linck and of Yeats, where the characters, vague 
and elusive, pass shadowlike before our vision. 
The revolving stage is the proper medium 
for Shakespeare with his definite outlines 
and his vivid perceptions of life. The stage 
of Frau Dumont, with its glimpses of in- 
finity and vague suggestions, represents aptly the 
unique mentality of the author of The Death of 
Tintagiles, 

Satiated with all things, the ancient civilizations 
are ever ready to hail the new. Out of the mental 
unrest of modern Germany is born the tenth of the 
Muses, the new art of nudity. Many things that 
once were natural are to-day arts. There was a 
time when men's motions were naturally graceful, 
when dance was instinctive. But in the course of 
time mankind forgot; and what was once a func- 



INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 127 

tlon of every human being, Is resurrected today in 
the polished art of Isadora Duncan. Song, we are 
told, is older than speech. The conversation of 
men in olden days was rhythmic. Poetry to-day is 
an art confined to the few. In the golden ages 
of the Greeks and in the Paradise of the Hebrew, 
men were splendid and nude. Then came sin, 
and we swathed our bodies in hideous clothes, and 
were ashamed of them. And so long have we hid- 
den and marred them, that at last nudeness, like 
singing and dancing, has become an accomplish- 
ment. 

The two chief German exponents of the new art 
are Olga Desmond and Herr Salge, who have 
given a number of performances in Berlin before 
the Society of the Friends of Beauty, and later in 
public. In which they went perfectly nude through 
a series of beautiful poses. They made the curves 
of their bodies express meanings as definite as 
sculpture and music. The Greeks, I am sure, 
would have welcomed this new addition to the 
ranks of the Muses. But in Germany, as I have 
said, the incarnation of Euphorlon is not as yet 
wholly consummated. The new art was hotly dis- 
cussed throughout the Empire, and the police were 
called upon to interfere with Olga Desmond's 
performances outside of Berlin. The matter 
was debated In the Reichstag, and, strange to 
say, the Government itself took up the cudgels for 
the new Muse of Nudity. The Reichstag attended 



128 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

In a body one of Olga Desmond's performances. 
Imagine how Congress would behave In an analo- 
gous Instance! 

Distinguished artists, among these Relnhold 
Begas, and Professor Herter, the creator of the 
Heine fountain In New York, hastened to the de- 
fense of Desmond. Begas Insisted that the naked 
body cannot arouse prurient speculation. " Ana- 
lyze your feelings," he said, " and you will realize 
that the erotic element hardly enters." Herter as- 
serted that the nude body, at a proper distance In 
a beautiful pose, Is always aesthetic. " I would 
not know," he said, ^' how to represent sensuality 
nude." An Interesting point was made by Profes- 
sor Goetz. Often, In seeing a picture, a landscape, 
we joyfully exclaim, " Why, I have witnessed that 
effect before In nature." In a similar manner we 
are more apt to appreciate the nude In sculpture 
If we have stored In our minds perceptions of 
beautiful nude bodies. This '^ sad late age " Is ex- 
tremely poor In these; so poor. Indeed, that the 
public Interest Is almost exclusively confined to the 
head, because we, most of us, have no opportuni- 
ties to see beautiful bodies. 

The new art of nudity, as we have seen, has so 
far been primarily defended from the point of 
view of the sculptor. When the renaissance of 
the Hellenic spirit in the twentieth century is com- 
plete, it will need no defense beyond Its beauty. 
The Muse of Nudity is not the youngest, but the 



INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 129 

oldest of all the Muses. In her domain, the ex- 
tremes of civilization, the sophisticated and primi- 
tive nature, are blended. We are no more ready 
for her than were the monks of the Middle Ages. 
Before an audience composed, even partly, of Car- 
rie Nations and of Anthony Comstocks, the art 
of nakedness would be a thing obscene. 

The founders of our own New Theater would 
never invite the tenth of the Muses to reveal with- 
in its sacred precincts the miracle of her loveliness. 
This theater, declared Governor Hughes, at the 
formal opening, November 6th, 1909, shall be 
devoted to art. But it shall never become a 
** museum of abnormalities." Yet what is all art 
but a museum of abnormalities? Hamlet, Mac- 
beth, Lear, the tortured creatures of Hauptmann 
and of Ibsen, are hardly conventional normal 
types. In biology the exception proves the rule. 
Art through the abnormal depicts the normal. 
Perfectly normal people are perfectly dull. The 
dramatic struggle calls for the contention between 
conventional and eccentric social forces. 

The province of art is to provide caviar for the 
general. If the general refuse this fare, then, in- 
deed, are we in a difficult plight. Instead of intel- 
ligence endowed with millions, let us have mill- 
ions endowed with intelligence. Intelligent artis- 
tic appreciation is rare in native America. The 
intellectual founder of the New Theater, Heinrich 
Conried, was an Austrian subject. The first great 



I30 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

essentially American play, The Melting Pot, was 
written by an English Jew. And It Is perhaps sig- 
nificant that the first American author heard in 
the New Theater bears the aromatic and un-Amer- 
ican name of Knoblauch. 

Yet I am perhaps unjust to the American play- 
wright. Clyde Fitch's last play, The City, is almost 
Elizabethan In Its terror and Its strength. Charles 
Klein and Augustus Thomas may yet purge their 
systems of the germs of moralomania. We shall 
have to reckon with them again when they redis- 
cover that in the drama action speaks louder than 
words. William Vaughn Moody, in a splendid 
but isolated attack of forgetfulness, wrote 
The Great Divide. We may at least hope that 
he will forget himself again in the future. 
Percy Mackaye always soars beyond his strength. 
He is the Icarus of American drama. But his 
daring, at least, is an encouraging omen. Edward 
Sheldon, the latest product of Harvard's dramatic 
nursery, aims to reconcile the Bowery drama with 
the problem play. Eugene Walter, groping like- 
wise toward a new dramatic form which shall com- 
bine the antithetical principles espoused by the 
Third Avenue Theater and the Theatre Antoine, 
also draws upon the exhaustless well of melo- 
drama. We may say that melodrama degenerates 
in his hands. In his third acts it Is vice, not virtue, 
that triumphs. His art seems to be melodrama in- 
verted. Here, however, degeneration — applying 



INTELLECTUAL DRAMA 131 

the term with scientific discrimination — denotes 
an upward step in evolution. From the decom- 
position of melodrama will issue, perhaps, the 
drama of the future. 

We have authors; we have theaters. Where 
shall we find a public? In Paris, in Berlin, pre- 
mieres- are public events. A new play is hotly dis- 
cussed. Actors are known to have been egged. 
We view the stage with stony indifference. 
Until Sothern's interpretation of Hamlet, or 
Faversham's conception of a new play by Stephen 
Phillips, is to us all a matter of vital and personal 
interest, the New Theater will be only an arch of 
promise in our theatrical sky. 



CHAPTER XI 

THINGS LITERARY 

I AM a great believer In antinomies. Every 
truth, like the bee Its sting, carries within it its 
own negation. There is not one truth, but many. 
No one has ever uttered more than a half truth. 
Those who, like Whitman, attempt to express the 
whole truth are necessarily inconsistent. Niet- 
zsche's Zarathtistra utters a half truth. And the 
Hebrew prophets have uttered a half truth. 
Those who desire the whole truth must needs 
reconcile the irreconcilable. They must harmon- 
ize the Sermon on the Mount with the egotistical 
doctrines of Stirner. Life is a shining jewel. We 
can never see it whole. We may only hope to re- 
flect the glint of some of its facets. 

I am aware that I am dreadfully inconsistent. 
But I am not ashamed. The Book of Life is full 
of inconsistencies. Why should we attempt to 
be consistent If the Author of all things has no 
compunction In apparently contradicting himself? 
Even if we had glimpses of the ultimate truth, 
how could we express the infinite in terms of the 
finite? Besides, we could be truthful, even in a 

132 



THINGS LITERARY 133 

limited sense, only with an Intellectual double, 
whose mind was a replica of our own. For those 
whose mentality is on a slightly different plane 
from ours we must translate our mental vibrations. 
The symbols that convey one meaning to us may 
convey antithetical notions to others. In order to 
make our thoughts recognizable, we must disguise 
them. We must lie, to be truthful. 

I have in the past compared literary Germany 
to a madhouse. Insanity, I insisted, was the bed- 
fellow of her genius. And I was perfectly right. 
I have nothing to modify. I have stated perfectly 
one half of the truth. I shall now contradict my- 
self flatly. I shall express the other half of this 
puzzling antinomy. 

If I were to describe the literary atmosphere of 
Germany In one word, I should say that It Is per- 
vaded by health. There is nothing of the sickly 
spirit that stigmatizes the literature of the New 
World. We have stunted the growth of letters. 
We cram genius into the bed of Procrustes. Ger- 
many gives full scope to self-expression. We ask 
brambles of the pomegranate tree. We prune 
the poet's inspiration. We measure by the 
same standard the pine tree and the hedge. 
We have men of esprit, but we compel 
them to hide their light under the bushel of our 
stupidity. 

Besides, we despise purely Imaginative values 
— except in Wall Street. The late Richard Wat- 



134 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

son Gilder was highly elated when, at a festival of 
the Felibres in France, he was introduced as '^ M. 
le poete" 

" You see," he explained to me, " I had come 
from a country where it is almost an insult to be 
called a poet.** 

Our indifference to tRie creative ability is so in- 
tense that we have even driven our greatest imag- 
inative genius, barring Poe, from his proper field 
of literary endeavor into the unfamiliar realm of 
Arctic exploration. When Dr. Cook came back 
to us as the discoverer of the North Pole, — a dull 
and meaningless feat, — we hailed him as a na- 
tional hero. But when we began to suspect that 
his tale was not a recital of vulgar fact, but the 
indisputable evidence of high imaginative endow- 
ment, we flouted him! We have barred his bust 
from the Hall of Fame, together with that of the 
author of " Gordon Pym.'* Those who believe 
with Wilde that the aim of art is lying, must place 
Dr. Frederick A. Cook above Commander Robert 
E. Peary. Anybody might discover the pole; but 
not everybody could create highly-colored and 
eloquent prose, hypnotizing two hemispheres with 
its measured cadence. Even from the point of view 
of mere human justice, it seems unfair that we, a 
nation of fakers, should thus disown the greatest 
exponent of our national trait. 

We are more afraid of originality than of the 
Devil. The " six best sellers " might all have 



THINGS LITERARY 135 

been written by one man, or rather, by one wo- 
man. Our books, like our clothes and our morals, 
are ready-made. In German letters it is person- 
ality that counts. Germany regards seriously only 
those who have something to say. She is less con- 
cerned about the little niceties of expression. Our 
books are written with uniform excellence in irre- 
proachable style. I am sure that most of our au- 
thors would pass the college entrance examinations 
in English. I am equally sure that the most dis- 
tinguished German writers would be sadly de- 
ficient from the point of view of the manufacturers 
of lingual patterns. Their style is individual, not 
academic. 

We are forced to write down to the mediocre 
level of an imaginary public. We painstakingly 
remove the vitals from the body of our writing. 
Editors and publishers apparently have an exceed- 
ingly low opinion of their patron, the public. I 
have more faith in the reader. His intelligence, I 
admit, is not usually of a high order, but he cannot 
be as inane as the fodder supplied to him by the 
magazines. Occasionally an original idea some- 
how makes its way into print in spite of the editor, 
and in spite of him scores a success. At once the 
publisher slyly degrades it into a pattern. Abroad 
authors are afraid of imitating even themselves. 
We quench their genius in the monotony of the 
treadmill. We value them merely for certain 
products, just as we prize the stuffed goose for its 



136 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

torpid liver. Our literature is as sick as a torpid 
goose. 

Life, health, is development, variety, growth. 
There is something distinctly diseased in the men- 
tal frame of authors who year in, year out, squeeze 
from their cerebrums the same thin, colorless fluid. 
We measure even the exact amount of the drivel 
that shall ooze from their minds. We rigorously 
regulate the bulk of a book. In Germany there is 
a delightful variety in bookmaking and a corre- 
sponding variety In prices. An author writes be- 
cause he has something to say. When he has said 
it, he stops. If he cannot express himself in one 
volume, no publisher will dare to prescribe me- 
chanical limits to the flights of his inspiration. 

The late Otto Julius Blerbaum was a typical 
German literateur. Otto Julius Blerbaum was a 
healthy literateur. He was healthier than the 
editor of The Ladies^ Home Journal. He was 
healthy, because he was often morbid. He fully 
revealed himself in his books. No American pub- 
lisher would have dared to publish his rhythmical 
studies of passion. And the very bulk of his 
books would have crushed his fortunes. Prinz 
Kukuck, the most important essay in fiction of 
his later years, like Gaul, is divided into three 
parts, published in three expensive volumes of un- 
equal length. And It is Gallic In flavor, its sub-title 
running thus: ^' Life, Adventures and Descent to 
Hell of a Voluptuary.'* The book portrays strong 



THINGS LITERARY 137 

normal passions and curious erotic vagaries. 
There is a suggestion of Nero and a suggestion of 
Borgia. 

The circle of passion revolving in the pages be- 
fore us completes the cycle of human perversion, 
from the sick passion of mad Roman Caesars to 
mediaeval incest and the vices of Alexander VI. 
The novelist never moralizes. He narrates inci- 
dents as they happen. But you feel that his 
ethical code conflicts with the tables of Moses. 
He is not ashamed of portraying the purely sen- 
sual. He avowedly loves the flesh, but, being a 
modern, burdened down with the heritage of 
Hamlet, he cannot divorce it from mind. He is 
not in the least concerned about the reader's com- 
fort. He tarries for a hundred pages where he is 
interested, and disposes of a decade in a sentence, 
where he is not. But when I lay a book of his 
aside, I feel, in the words of Whitman, that I 
have touched a man. He was not the impersonal 
narrator, but, like Dickens, confided in us as in a 
friend. 

The cultured American keeps his best as well 
as his worst to himself. Even Crawford, for 
whom I have always had a tender regard, never 
fully revealed the depth and height of his being. 
Bierbaum exposed both to our gaze. That is why 
his books are of permanent value. Ships running 
at half-speed will never traverse the ocean of 
eternity. In the successor to Prinz Kukuck, Sell- 



138 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

same Geschichten, stories of the weird, Bierbaum 
has given us mainly his worst. His mannerisms 
are become unbearable. His reflections, tedious. 
He is as garrulous as a parrot. The flower of 
genius has run to seed. But that is inevitable, 
natural, and therefore hardly a symptom of 
disease. 

While Bierbaum's vision of life is normal in 
its total effect, Hans Heinz Ewers evolves out 
of his sadistic imagination nightmares of cruelty 
and lust. He is a Poe plus sex, minus style. 
Ewers and his curious stories of obsession and car- 
nage are read as widely as Poe. We would have 
shunned Poe if he had strayed into the byways of 
sex, as he has strayed into the byways of horror. 
And we would probably jail the publisher of 
Ewers's fantastic short stories. We would cer- 
tainly regard the author as being beyond the pale. 

Germany being less morbid is less squeamish 
than we. She merely expects the poet to ride his 
Pegasus skillfully. And no one is naive enough 
to confuse his literary performances with his pri- 
vate morals. I have not met Ewers, but I have 
seen his picture and that of his wife, a charming 
woman of somewhat more robust fiber than he. 
Ewers seems to be a delicate, one might almost 
say fragile, creature. I am sure that in life he 
would turn in disgust from the dreadful visions 
that delectate his readers. Which reminds me of 
that bourgeois Maupassant, Heinz Tovote. 



THINGS LITERARY 139 

Tovote's family life is an idyl in the German 
Gomorrah. He is an adorable little fellow, with a 
leaning to embonpoint. But his stories are very 
naughty. Nevertheless, in his own narrow field 
he is unparalleled. If I had a daughter, I would 
gladly entrust her, unchaperoned, to the care of a 
poet of passion. And if I had a son, I would no less 
gladly choose a passional poetess for his com- 
panion. Like the proverbial dog whose melodious 
voice constantly irritates our ear drums, the poet 
of passion is comparatively innocuous. Notwith- 
standing his protestations, he will not bite. 

The most ardent singer of the flesh in Germany, 
Marie Madeleine, is the conventional wife of a 
pensioned general. But upon her forehead gleams 
the diadem of song. In her voluptuous, rhythmic 
and wonderfully passionate poems she approaches 
Swinburne himself. She lacks the knowledge of 
books, the erudition of Swinburne. She surpasses 
him in the knowledge of human passion. She has 
sung of Antinous, and she has sung of Sappho, 
and of the " white implacable Aphrodite." Her 
passional studies are cries from the depths of her 
potential selves. In reality, she is perfectly respect- 
able and perfectly bourgeoise. Her life is whole- 
some because it is complete. She is virtuous in her 
private life, but a Faustina in song. Impulses 
which, if suppressed, would have poisoned her life, 
escape through the safety-valve of literary expres- 
sion. The antitoxin of genius disinfects them for 



140 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

us. No poet living to-day has breathed into his 
song more voluptuous music than this: 

Ich sah dein Bild die ganze Nacht, 
TJnd in mir stohnte diimpf das Tier, 
All meine Sehnsiicht schrie nach dir 
Die ganze Nacht, die ganze Nacht. 

sif sff sic stf stf iSf sif 

Dii Idchelst stolz — '^ Ich hah's gewusst! '' 
Und weisst dock nicht wie ich mich sehne 
Zu graben meine Rauhtierzdhne 
In deine nackte Jiinglingsbrust. 

The genius of Marie Madeleine has found its 
supreme embodiment in Auf Kypros, a collection 
of verses published when she was a mere slip of a 
girl. At once she became the fashion. Imitators 
sprang up like fungi. But her first sonorous utter- 
ance was followed by imbecile and frivolous verse, 
and mediocre fiction. In her later books, notably 
in a volume entitled In Seligkeit und Sunden, she 
has again redeemed herself. Her very uneven- 
ness is a sign of health. Like Blerbaum, she sup- 
presses neither her best nor her worst, leaving the 
verdict on the knees of the gods. 

The German author, as I have said, is less pol- 
ished than we. He rises to greater heights and 
descends to immeasurably lower levels. If an 
author has once made a reputation for himself 
among us in any peculiar field, he is secure unto 



THINGS LITERARY 141 

the day of his death, unless he insists upon ventur- 
ing Into unexplored regions. A new idea is fatal 
to his reputation. Occasionally an intrepid writer 
has dared to be original, but Invariably the flesh- 
pot has proved too strong a lure for him In the 
end. Mark Twain has written some of the most 
serious books of the century. He is the most 
serious writer I know. But we refuse to treat his 
book on Joan of Arc, or his masterful study of 
the Shakespeare problem, with respectful consid- 
eration. We laugh at the clown, even if his 
grimaces are convulsions of death. 

In Germany, however, critics have no patience 
with a man who repeats himself. The new plays 
of Sudermann and of Hauptmann are In no way 
inferior to the antecedent performances of their 
authors. But Germany asks higher achievements 
In divers fields, and is suspicious, moreover, of too 
sure a technique. Ludwig Fulda, the translator of 
Mollere and the Mollere of his epoch, has suf- 
fered all his life because a well-meaning and 
deluded fairy has endowed him excessively with 
verbal and metrical skill. 

Modern Germans love the big things roughly 
hewn out of stone. Michael Angelo and Rodin, 
not Phidias, are to them the embodiments of 
genius. Gerhardt Hauptmann has reached such a 
degree of proficiency In his art that his admirers 
have begun to suspect the genuine quality of his 
gifts. They have turned away from him and 



142 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

raised his brother Karl upon their shields. Karl, 
they say, is the greater poet, Gerhardt the greater 
craftsman. Karl is surely a man of genius. But I 
shall never forget the lovely face of Rautendelein, 
sister to Peter Pan. Karl has not conjured a Rau- 
tendelein into being. His novels are masterly de- 
lineations of the lives of the lower classes. I have 
no use for the deservedly poor, — least of all In 
fiction. Their diseases are so uninteresting. The 
diseases of the cultured, like the pearl, that disease 
of the oyster, are often of delicate texture. 

Both brothers regard their work with a serious- 
ness that is terrifying in the sense in which 
Niagara, or any other great cosmic manifestation, 
is terrifying. American writers consider their 
profession a trade. We have a sense of humor, at 
least of caricature, but no sense of the dignity of 
our calling. If success eludes the literary trades- 
man, he will readily change his literary complexion, 
as a traveling salesman deserts men's clothing for 
ladies' hose. Not the law of his growth, but the 
demand of the market, diverts his talents into new 
avenues. The law of growth determines the meta- 
morphoses of the genuine artist. The moment 
European writers of reputation cease to grow, the 
elect turn away from them, even if the rabble still 
worship awhile In the forsaken sanctuary. 

The European writer Is ever goaded on by the 
dread of displeasing the critical Grand Moguls 
who pronounce his destiny. A critic may often be 



THINGS LITERARY 143 

greater than the author whom he brilliantly mis- 
interprets. Such a critic is Alfred Kerr, whose 
word is fate in the Neue Rundschau, He is dis- 
tinctly creative: he makes and he mars. Even the 
greatest in literature owe their renown in part to 
their critics. Faust and Hamlet are greater to- 
day than they were when their authors conceived 
them, because the greatest critical minds of several 
centuries have made them the storehouses of their 
intellectual treasures. Every commentary adds a 
new and connotative value to the original. 

Critics are taken more seriously on the conti- 
nent than with us. But then, we mav count our 
creative critics on the fingers of one hand. James 
Huneker may be said to be the index finger, point- 
ing the way to the new. Paul Elmer More is the 
thumb, pointing backward. William Marion 
Reedy is the middle finger. The little finger is 
Percival Pollard. I cannot make up my mind as 
to who is the fifth; but I suspect Michael Mona- 
han. Germany and France each have one for 
every finger and every toe. The wholesale fear 
of the critics forces European writers to draw upon 
that mysterious and exhaustless well of inspiration 
which William James describes as the " second 
wind " of the mind. 

German literature, like French literature, is an 
oligarchy. German authors write up to the few. 
We write down to the many. The elect are swift 
to recognize counterfeit values. They are swift 



144 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

to recognize even the uncut gem. Hugo Bertsch, 
a German-American laborer, crude and untaught, 
won instant and sensational recognition through 
his novel, Die Geschwister. We would have 
*' turned down " his unorthographic copy with a 
contemptuous smile. Hugo Bertsch, like Shakes- 
peare, writes better than he spells. Our novelists 
spell better than they write. German writers give 
us even their crudities — they might be gems. The 
idol heedlessly dragged to the junk shop may be 
the true God after all! But the dead arm of 
Solomon cannot hold those critical spirits in thrall. 
Germany will not quench her thirst with stagnant 
waters. 

Not long ago I remarked, half in jest, to Karl 
Hauptmann: "Who is greater, you or your 
brother?'* Whereupon Karl replied with fine 
dignity: *' Neither my brother's life work, nor 
mine, Is completed. I should look upon myself 
as a corpse if it were. It is too early to close the 
books. We have neither of us ceased to develop. 
We are not ready yet to be judged." Both men 
have passed the age of forty. Karl is almost fifty. 
Had they been born among us, the grooves of 
their lives would have been established forever. 
Their epitaphs would lie all written out in the 
pigeon-holes of the press. And precious little 
would there be to add, though they live to the 
Biblical age. But at this day no man can predict 
what startling new developments may divert the 



THINGS LITERARY 145 

genius of these brothers into unsuspected and 
novel channels. 

I might also have spoken of my friend, Johan- 
nes Schlaf, the father of German realism. Schlaf, 
havmg run the gamut from realism to mysticism, 
is again groping his way toward new ideals. Arno 
Holz, his former brother in arms and letters, has 
likewise passed through many curious metamor- 
phoses. At present he amuses himself by writing 
poems without rhyme or meter, in the shape of in- 
verted pyramids, such as this. (I borrow the ex- 
cellent translation of my friend, William Ellery 
Leonard.) 

BUDDHA 

By night around my temple grove 
watch seventy brazen cows. 
A thousand mottled stone lampions flicker. 

Upon a red throne of lac 
I sit in the Holy of Holies, 

Over me 
thro* the beams of sandalwood, 
in the ceiling's open square, 
stand the stars. 

I blink. 

Were I now to rise up 
my ivory shoulders would splinter the roof; 



146 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

and the oval diamond upon my brow 
would stave-in the moon. 

The chubby priests may snore away. 
I rise not up. 
I sit with legs crossed under 
and observe my navel. 

It is a blood red ruby 
in a naked belly of gold. 

Stephan George, the Viennese pre-Raphaellte, 
has even reformed the German language. In his 
curious pastels he employs an orthography dis- 
tinctly at war with usage. The genius of modern 
Germany, alert and nervous, is always ready to hail 
new stars and new gods. 

It would be futile to deny the presence of a 
morbid strain in continental letters. Certain writ- 
ers, like Ewers and the imitators of Marie Made- 
leine, are too strongly allured by the purely per- 
verse. But even corruption is not always without 
beauty. In the first stages of cancer a woman's 
skin is said to be almost pellucid. The Blessed 
Damozels of Rossetti are distinctly consumptive. 
Sickness, Heine says, is perhaps the ultimate cause 
of creation. 

Krankheit ist wol der letzte Grund 
Des ganzen Schopfungsdrangs gewesen, 
Erschaffend wurde ich gesund, 
Erschafend konnte ich genesen. 



THINGS LITERARY 147 

Sickness In Itself Is merely nature's attempt to 
regain her balance. Much that seems morbid in 
modern German civilization merely Indicates na- 
ture's struggle for health. The poison Is not sup- 
pressed; It breaks out, runs Its course, and insures 
the health of the patient. The butterfly In Its 
ugly transitional stage Impresses the student with 
Its promise of future beauty. And much that we 
regard as diseased may thus be prophetic of a 
larger culture. Viewed In this light, even the 
atrocities of SinipUcissimus and Jiigend are molli- 
fied. Most comic journals and many books 
published in Germany would be barred by pos- 
tal tyranny from the United States mails. Sim- 
plicissimus and Jugend, having been warned re- 
peatedly by our postal authorities, will regale 
us in the future with editions resembhng at 
least in one respect the boy-choir of the 
Vatican. 

I have always entertained for letter carriers the 
tender affection bestowed in olden times upon 
couriers. The average letter carrier, I am sure, 
is a man of strong moral principles, an Impeccable 
father and a peerless husband. He has passed 
through the gate of the Civil Service examination. 
He is a useful citizen. I have no grudge against 
him. But If some Jack-in-office, or post-office, had 
the preposterous presumption to inquire into my 
literary morals, or to determine questions of ar- 
tistic finesse^ I would unpleasantly remind him of 



148 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

the fate of Marsyas; or, like Oberon, present him 
with the decoration of Bottom. 

The freedom of literature, as well as the free- 
dom of speech, is more unrestrained in the mon- 
archies of Europe than in the republic described 
by an unconscious ironist as " the land of the 
free." The postal clerk abroad who would dare 
to lay hands on a work like the Kreutzer Sonata, 
would be drowned in a flood of derision. We look 
on with folded arms when the machinery of the 
federal government, set into motion by an igno- 
rant clerk, crushes our vaunted freedom of speech. 
And we forget that the monster of federal as- 
sumption, like the vampire, grows in strength with 
each victim. 

Of course, not every book published abroad 
would be in danger of literary assassination in 
America. Of late the genius of Ellen Key, the 
distinguished Swede; and of Franciska Mann, and 
Gabrielle Reuter and Ricarda Huch, her prophets 
in Berlin, have been diverting the tide of fashion 
from sanctuaries where amorous peccadilloes are 
tantamount to devotion to new and saner ideals. 
Although the outre and the morbid color modern 
German literature, the solid successes of the last few 
years, Jorn Uhl, Die Buddenhrucks, Konigliche 
Hoheit, and Gotz Kraft, glow with health, not 
putrescence. They are a splendid affirmation of 
the inherent soundness of the German people. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 

Copenhagen with its wharves and its ships 
IS a picturesque place. My knowledge of geog- 
raphy is rudimentary, but Denmark, I believe, is 
surrounded by water. Strangely enough, the city 
of Copenhagen can be reached directly by train 
from Berlin. Twice in the journey a giant ferry 
carries locomotive and cars with the passengers 
across large stretches of water. Having once ar- 
rived in Copenhagen, you don't know what to do 
with yourself. There are only four things of In- 
terest in Denmark: The Glyptothek, the Thor- 
waldsen Museum, George Brandes, and the grave 
of Hamlet. After you have seen these, nothing 
remains. The Glyptothek gladly throws open its 
gates to you ; the Thorwaldsen Museum hospitably 
invites you. I should not advise you to visit 
George Brandes. But by all means visit the grave 
of Hamlet. I have denied myself this pleasure. 
Now throughout the years the vision of that grave 
will lure my fancy to Denmark. 

Professor Brandes informs me that Hamlet 
was never in Elslnore; neither Is he there burled. 

149 



150 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

According to legend, Hamlet was a minor vassal 
king In Jutland; Zealand, where Shakespeare dis- 
located him, knew him not. But when Shakes- 
peare's countrymen demanded to mingle their 
tears with his ashes, an alert innkeeper, Marian- 
lysts, of Elsinore, erected a stone-heap there some 
twenty years ago, revered ever since by genera- 
tions of tourists as the grave of Ophelia's obese 
and unsatisfactory lover. 

The Professor, I fear. Is an Incurable pedant. 
Those who direct their steps to Elsinore worship 
the spirit of Hamlet. His skeleton is to them a 
matter of utter indifference. Every grave is 
spurious but for faith. The mockery of this tomb 
would be no less hollow even if Hamlet's carcass 
had stained the coffinboard with the obscene juices 
of putrefaction. 

Poets are lords of circumstance; they are lords 
also of geography, from the terrace of Elsinore 
to the coast of Bohemia. Too often, alas, the 
reality fails to tally with fiction. The world, 
therefore, owes a debt of gratitude to the imagina- 
tive innkeeper for having given to Hamlet's 
ghost the local habitation prescribed by sentiment. 
I am sure that to me at any rate Hamlet's grave, 
unvlsited, will be more inspiring than If I had 
actually seen it. I never have the proper emotions 
when I ought to have them. I should probably 
feel very stupid If I were to encounter the ghost 
of the Dane. I would not know how to take him. 



THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 151 

A man whose temperament Is defined by his faulty 
digestion must change considerably when he him- 
self Is digested. 

In Copenhagen I saw all there is to be seen. 
The vanity of my host was deeply pricked because 
I stayed only two days. He scornfully suggested 
that I should take half a day longer to study Nor- 
way and Sweden. 

They are very proud of their Glyptothek In 
Copenhagen. I have never cared for picture gal- 
leries and museums. Like anthologies, they are 
always so dreadfully disappointing. Recently 
somebody edited a compilation of English verse 
sifted from several standard anthologies. I read 
the book from cover to cover. There was not a 
single poem but had been approved of by seven 
previous compilers. And yet the final Impression 
was unsatisfactory. English literature had never 
seemed so poverty-stricken to me. 

If a poet of minor rank had fathered all these 
pieces as the presumptive author, the volume, I 
am convinced, would hardly have created more 
than a ripple. Poems, like pictures, need frames. 
There must be a personality behind them. Only 
two or three poems clung to me after I had fin- 
ished the volume. In an anthology hundreds of 
instruments seem to play as many tunes, all at the 
same time, producing grotesque and Incongruous 
cacophonies. Only now and then an Insistent 
personal note penetrates the musical chaos. 



152 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

I remember none of the pictures and only two 
or three pieces of sculpture exhibited in the Glyp- 
tothek. There was Sinding, the brilliant young 
Norseman, to whom the mystery of beauty is re- 
vealed in the naked body. Half Rodinesque, half 
Greek, he clothes the flesh with new splendor. 
And there was Limburg's " Violin Player " mak- 
ing rapturous music, heedless of the woman beside 
him who has swooned with desire. Come to think 
of it, my memory perhaps betrays me. I may have 
seen the " Violin Player '^ only on a picture postal 
card. But it is very real to me. And I think I 
have seen it in Denmark. 

In the Thorwaldsen Museum the ensculptured 
thoughts of the artist are harmoniously linked to- 
gether. I sometimes envy the sculptor because his 
ideas are so clearly visualized. We who dabble 
in words are tortured, once in a while, by the un- 
reality of our medium. That, perhaps, is the 
reason why Arthur Brisbane entertains himself by 
manufacturing furniture — at a loss. " Chairs," 
he once said to me in the strange reaction that 
overtakes the tired brain worker at times, " chairs 
are real. But words, bah ! are nothings ! " 

The Thorwaldsen Museum is the picture of 
Thorwaldsen's brain; but of a brain vibrant no 
more with emotion. Every statue is a living 
monument to a dead idea. The moment a child 
is born it Is no longer an organic part of the 
mother. The moment we express an opinion we 



THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 153 

lose it. I am as indifferent to my poems, once 
they have sprung into life, as the cockatoo is to 
its little ones who have escaped from the egg. 
This may be a horrible ornithological blunder. I 
am not up in bird-lore. But I am sure there is 
some kind of fowl that treats its progeny rather 
badly. - Thorwaldsen would probably feel like 
walking in a graveyard, had he lived to see the 
edifice raised in his honor. Every ornament 
would have marked some dead emotion. 

Thorwaldsen's statues and sculptures lack In 
nothing save strength. To me their charm is con- 
ventional. I wonder whether he himself was never 
bored with his sleepy lions and the meaningless 
grace of his Cupids? Who knows, perhaps his 
brain, too, had a chamber of horrors to which he 
alone held the key. And while his soul was fright- 
ened by monstrous visions, his hands craftily 
fashioned images pleasing and bland. 

We who have succumbed to the spell of Rodin 
are lost forever to the art of the Danish master. 
We have thrilled with the lyric rapture of the 
Frenchman's " Kiss," and with bated breath be- 
held the " Hand of God." Rodin is the incarna- 
tion of mental rebellion and Titanic strength. 
Michael Angelo and Lucifer are his spiritual 
progenitors. Thorwaldsen's body was the tem- 
poral mansion of some smiling Greek with ringlets 
carefully trimmed, enamored of surface beauties, 
neither profound nor subtle. 



154 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

Again disappointed, I wended my way to the 
house of Professor Brandes. 

They had told me strange stories of the Pro- 
fessor in Copenhagen, of his many peculiarities 
and how conceited he was! They said that his 
memoirs, upon the writing of which he was now 
engaged, were chiefly the accounts of dinners 
tendered to him in his long career, and that he 
had carefully preserved all the menus. 

I shall write freely of Brandes as one writes of 
the dead. He is already an institution. Here 
was a thinker and student famed throughout the 
civilized world, but his immediate neighbors re- 
membered only his foibles! They were proud of 
him as of the Glyptothek, only a little less. He 
was a " sight " to be pointed out to strangers. Of 
the immense mental stature of the man who has 
left his impress on Europe, they had hardly an 
inkling. I was also told that Brandes receives a 
small government pension, reckoned large in those 
parts, of some few hundred dollars. And how 
years ago he had deserted Denmark in anger be- 
cause a professorship he coveted had been with- 
held from him because of his racial affinity with 
Moses. 

This view apparently is erroneous. *' Who,'* 
he writes to me, '' told you that I could not get in 
office because I was a Jew? That is ridiculous; 
the Jews have ten thousand offices in Denmark. 
I have been these forty years the only Dane who 



THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 155 

was a Greek, not a Hebrew. Our nation was be- 
fogged by Jewish Christian orthodoxy, and I was 
compelled to leave the country because I was a 
freethinker." 

My Danish friends assured me that Brandes was 
a crank. Inaccessible to strangers, and asked me 
whether I had an Introduction to him. I explained 
that I knew two of his intimate friends who 
would surely have given me Introductions, had I 
known beforehand that I would visit Brandes on 
my trip abroad. 

These things I munched In my mind as I 
climbed the stairs to the philosopher's simple 
abode. A copy of Nineveh rested securely in a 
side pocket of my coat. A seductive smile curled 
my lips. 

Without hesitation I pulled the bell. 

A maid half opened the door, and upon my 
question whether the Herr Professor was at home, 
she mumbled something in Danish which I could 
not understand, and shut the door In my face. 

I waited a little while, and again rang the bell. 
Again the maid appeared and listened to me with 
impatience as I informed her In German that I 
would plant myself in front of the door until she 
had taken my card to the Herr Professor. She 
snatched the card from me with an air of disgust, 
and retreated behind the door. One, two, three, 
four, five minutes passed, but no response was 
vouchsafed to my offering. 



156 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

Then, with grim determination, I rang the bell 
for the third time. There was a sound of shuffling 
steps. The door swung open. I caught a vision 
of a magnificent head, white and immense. Like 
an irate Jove, George Brandes glowered upon me. 

"Good heavens!" he scowled, "what do you 
want? I am working." 

" I want to see you, Herr Professor." 

" Everybody wants to see me. I have no time 
for tourists. Fm not on exhibition. Good-bye ! " 

Already the vision receded. One moment more, 
and the door would have closed behind him. I 
played my trump card. 

" Hold ! " I cried, with conscious dignity. " I 
am George Sylvester Viereck." 

" Yes? " he replied, with a vacant stare. 

I repeated my name with slow emphasis. I was 
not impatient with the old man. There was no 
shade of annoyance in my voice. But no gleam of 
intelligence leaped from the eyes of the sage. 

" I told you I was busy," he angrily reiterated. 
" If I were to see everybody, I should have to 
abandon my work." 

" But Fm not everybody," I answered. " I 
have come all the way from America to meet you. 
I can't leave Denmark without talking to you. 
That would be Hamlet with Hamlet left out." 

He was moved. 

" Come in," he said. 

Thus I entered the Holy of Holies. 



THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 157 

His studio, like Faust's, was lined with books. 
There were books everywhere. Nothing else. 
Books, and the dome of his furrowed head seemed 
to fill the room. 

'' I do not come to you without introductions," 
I said. '' I bring you greetings from your old 
friend," and I mentioned the name of a well- 
known German writer. " He intended to write 
me a note for you, but I did not get it in time." 

" Too bad," Brandes rejoined, " IVe never 
heard of the man." 

Nothing dismayed, I added sweetly: "And, of 
course, our mutual friend James Huneker has en- 
trusted me with his compliments." 

" Don't know him," the Sage of Copenhagen 
snapped back. 

" What ! " I exclaimed, '* you don't know the 
greatest American critic, the only man in America 
who understands you? " 

Brandes reflected. 

" Of course," he said, " I know his books. He 
is strangely brilliant for an American." 

" He's half Irish, half Hungarian," I inter- 
jected. 

'' But I have never met him in person." 

*' Well," I said, still undaunted, *' I am a con- 
siderable personage myself." 

He looked at me with amused incredulity. 

" I am the author of several books. My poems 
mark a new epoch in American literature. I have 



158 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

given a new impulse to the poetry of my age. Be- 
sides, for my recreation, I am editing two maga- 
zines." 

*' YouVe rather precocious," the sage retorted. 

Then, as if groping in some far convolution of 
his cerebrum for a reminiscence half erased from 
the scroll, he asked me: " Are you related to Louis 
Viereck, the former Socialist leader? " 

" He is my father," I said. 

"Strange!" he exclaimed. "Do you know 
that almost twenty-seven years ago Louis Viereck 
sought refuge in my house from police persecu- 
tion?" 

" How romantic ! " I said, inwardly pleased. 
" What was the matter? " 

" There was a Socialist Congress in Copen- 
hagen. The so-called ^ Exception-laws ' against 
the Socialists had just been framed by Bismarck, 
and secret police spies dogged the steps of every 
participant In the Congress. Our own police were 
in league with the Germans, and hardly had your 
father been seated when a policeman Inquired for 
him. I received him courteously, and explained 
to him that I had never seen Mr. Viereck." 

The ice being thus broken, we launched upon 
conversation. 

"You were not always so Inaccessible, then?" 
I queried. " You live strangely secluded for one 
so famous." 

" Yes," he replied, without vanity, and, let it 



THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 159 

be added, without smiling, " I am famous. But 
that is a meaningless phrase In view of the de- 
creasing sale of my books. In some cases the 
sales have dwindled down to thirty or forty 
copies." 

*' Impossible ! " I cried, " your publishers must 
be guilty of — miscalculations.'* 

"No; some have been excellent friends to me; 
nevertheless, only two copies of the German edition 
of my Memoirs were actually sold. They haven't 
even Issued the second volume. But I do not ask 
them. I am too proud." 

*' How could you have made your reputation, 
if the sales of your books are so circumscribed? " 

" I am sure I don't know. Some time ago I 
was lionized in France. I was dragged from 
banquet to banquet. Countless tributes were paid 
to my genius. And yet, I knew that none of the 
people who said sweet things to me had read my 
books. Only one of my books had been issued in 
French at that time. 

" But of course some of my books have been 
more fortunate than others. The complete edi- 
tion of my Danish writings was subscribed for 
by no less than six thousand people between 1899 
and 1902. That Is a great number for a country 
with a population of only two and one-half million 
people; and naturally there were many editions of 
single books previously and afterward. 

'' Aside from this success, the sales of my Dan- 



i6o CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

ish books have, however, averaged only seven hun- 
dred copies — and after several successes have 
brought me little money. My Lord Beaconsfieid 
was published by a prominent American house, 
and no less than one hundred thousand copies were 
sold, but I never received a cent In royalties. 
There have been three editions of my complete 
works In Russian, but I never saw a kopeka. All 
my books have been translated Into Polish, but I 
have never received a heller. My Main Ten- 
dencies, six volumes, published In Germany In nine 
large editions, did not net me a pfennig^ 

*' But what of the magazines? I have heard 
it said that they pay you fabulous prices." 

A sad smile flickered across the Olympian 
visage. 

" When the twentieth century was about to be 
ushered In, a prosperous German newspaper wrote 
to me that they had planned to publish a full page 
review of the nineteenth century by a poet, a 
philosopher, and a scholar; and that I was their 
man because I combined In my person the qualities 
of the three. 

" I don't care to write for newspapers. It de- 
tracts from my vitality and distracts me from my 
real pursuits. But as the chance for such an 
article occurs only once In an hundred years, and as 
I didn't expect to live through another century, 
I agreed to undertake the task for a remuneration 
of five hundred crowns [one hundred and twenty- 



THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN i6i 

five dollars]. They replied regretting that they 
had written to me, and that in view of my un- 
reasonable demands they would be compelled to 
enlist the services of less expensive pens." 

" But surely American magazines pay you 
well?" 

" They write to me occasionally for contribu- 
tions and ask me to name my own price. I don't 
care to do that sort of thing for less than five hun- 
dred crowns. And they invariably pay me less 
than one-half of the price I demand." 

" That is almost incredible." 

" I am old. The public is used to me now. 
They want new people. Younger writers. I do 
not blame them." 

I wonder if Homer or Goethe would have ob- 
served with such colossal indifference the rising of 
new suns on the literary horizon? And if the 
yellow press would have put them on half 
pay? 

'' Why," Brandes continued, and his eyes swept 
across an immense row of books reaching from one 
end of the room to the other, " all my books pub- 
lished in the English language earn for me less 
than fifty dollars per annum." 

Fifty dollars ! Was such the interest paid by 
us on the greatest outlay of intellectual capital the 
world has known since the days of Voltaire ! 

" But," I questioned, " how about the series of 
contemporary men of letters published under your 



1 62 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

editorship in the United States, In Germany, and 
In England? " 

" I have resigned the editorship. Subsequently, 
the publisher offered me one hundred marks [twen- 
ty-five dollars] for the use of my name. 

" And then," Brandes added, pointing contemp- 
tuously to a booklet in English, " this Is merely 
one chapter from one of my books. I suspect it 
is too expensive to reprint them entirely in the 
English language. I write only in Danish. As 
a young man, I used to write German and English, 
but I can't bother to rewrite my books several 
times. I must devote myself to my studies.'* 

There was something inspiring as well as pa- 
thetic in the figure of this world-renowned writer 
who faithfully works night and day to embody 
his visions for the hundred-odd people who form 
his literary constituency. Swinburne said with de- 
lightful irony that he wrote for antiquity. Brandes 
could never have said this. Nature, in his 
anatomy, omitted the funny-bone. The giants of 
literature are rarely endowed with a sense of 
humor. 

Brandes Is tremendously serious, yet without il- 
lusions. " There are only a few Immortals," he 
said. " In all the revolving years the world has 
produced scarcely twelve; and I shall not be 
among them. And yet, work alone Is the cup 
that stays and comforts us. In work we dimly 
apprehend the grim exultation of God when He 



THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 163 

moved on the face of the waters, and at His breath, 
Life was^ 

" Material vakies," Brandes exclaimed, " can 
never compensate us. There are no values but in- 
tellectual values. Hegel, the great German phi- 
losopher, placed the mind above all things. He 
synthesized his philosophy in the phrase that a 
wretched hon mot is greater than the sun. As 
for me, I prefer the sun to a wretched hon mot. 
But surely the mind of a Titan like Goethe out- 
balances almost a world." 

*' Do you then believe in the Superman? " 

** I never take into my mouth words which 
others have spit out. I despise such outworn pat- 
terns of speech more than I can express. But I 
believe in the ego. I believe in great men. I 
believe in great individualities. I don't believe 
in the rabble." 

" But," I said, *' is not a great man merely the 
mouthpiece of the rabble, the conscious exponent 
of all that labors blindly in the sub-consciousness 
of his people? " 

" On the contrary," he replied, " all great men 
have been at odds with their age. A great man's 
life is one continuous battle with mediocrity, which 
he outshines and which strives to obscure him. 
When Shakespeare left London, not a single ban- 
quet was given in his honor. When he buried 
himself in Stratford, mediocrity triumphed. But 
now the laugh is on them. A great man expresses 



1 64 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

merely his own individuality, although it has been 
said of Voltaire that he was not a man but an 
epoch." 

" But do you not believe in some kind of prog- 
ress? We who stand on the shoulders of Shake- 
speare should be able to sing more divinely than 
he." 

" There is little progress in the world. Much 
that we call progress is merely the progressive 
idiocy of the world. Technical progress and scien- 
tific progress have, I admit, wrought more changes 
in my own lifetime than in all the years that have 
revolved from the days of Julius Caesar to my 
own birth. But in art it is different. There we 
discover no trace of evolution, but only changing 
cycles of blossom and decay. We have created 
nothing greater than the ninth book of the Iliad, 
or the Sistine paintings of Michael Angelo." 

We exchanged courtesies, books. We spoke of 
many things; of Anatole France, of Maeterlinck, 
and of Denmark. The rest of the interview is 
blurred from my memory. But I shall never for- 
get the Jovian head, white and immense, of George 
Brandes. 

There is something wonderful in this man. His 
readers shrink to a handful from an hundred thou- 
sand; he still goes on in the unruffled tenor of his 
intellectual pathway. A pessimist, he has no 
hopes nor illusions. There is only the inspi- 
ration, perhaps the madness, of work. Like 



THE SAGE OF COPENHAGEN 165 

Socrates, he follows blindly the dictates of his 
daimon. 

George Brandes embodies a force that is alien 
to us. We would reckon a man who gave his 
heart's blood to an unheeding world little more 
than a^fool. But It Is only the fool divinely blind 
to his own Interest who shall save the world. 
Standing reverently In the studio of Brandes, I 
realized that literature, like religion, has Its ascet- 
ics. Its saints and Its martyrs. George Brandes In 
his library reminded me of some monk In a lone- 
some cloister decorating ancient parchments with 
curious designs for the glory of God. Even thus, 
patiently through the years, the sage of Copen- 
hagen illumines the Book of Life. 



CHAPTER XIII 

GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 

Germany, to borrow the phrase of a teetotaler, 
Is the classic land of moderate drinking. Out of 
Germany came the temperance drink, beer. Bac- 
chus DIonysIos has found many singers. Gam- 
brlnus Is unsung, If not unhonored, of poets. Yet 
is not the hop as fragrant as the grape? I am 
convinced that many poets who celebrate the vine 
have been Inspired by beer. But beer doesn't 
rhyme well. We deem it a word without literary 
traditions. Still, the history of beer is ancient 
and honorable, and Its literature reaches back to 
the dusk of the Pagan gods. Julian, the Apostate, 
was the first contributor to the literature of beer. 
He wrote a satirical poem against It. He also 
wrote satirical poems against the Christians. But 
the pale Galilean has conquered. And, strange 
as It may seem, beer has been a steady companion 
of Christian expansion. 

The watchword " Bibles and Beer " is applicable 
In a sense unsuspected by those who reproachfully 
coined It. When the Roman world power, the 
bulwark of Paganism, was demolished, the beer of 

i66 



GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 167 

the Teutons supplanted the Pagan wine. At first 
the odor of heathen festivals attached to the brew 
of Gambrlnus. But the wary Church adopted it 
along with the holidays of the heathens, and it 
was brewed in the monasteries. And In the drink- 
ing songs of the Germans, paeans of Christ were 
substituted for the paeans of Wotan. The Sal- 
vation Army and the Protestant churches seem to 
adhere to the same ecclesiastical policy; they both 
bawl devotional hymns to the rousing tunes of the 
convivial songs of the German student. 

The good monks of the Middle Ages served 
Bacchus and Gambrlnus with equal zeal. Chron- 
icles tell of a hop garden near the monastery of 
Frelsing, in 768. The Swedish bishop and cele- 
brated chronicler, Olaf Magnus, remarked In 
1502 that the wine in the South and the beer in 
the North were steadily improving. The papal 
legate, Ralmundus Lucullus, justified his cognomen 
by a rapturous tribute to the beer brewed In Ham- 
burg. Martin Luther was a jolly good fellow. 
It goes without saying that he sanctioned beer. 

Of course, the beer we drink to-day is superior 
to the beer of the ancient Germans. If Julian 
had drunk Pilsener, his poetic philippic against 
beer would have remained forever unwritten. He 
suffered his life long from indigestion. His tem- 
per in consequence was splenetic. He lost his 
empire because his temper ran away with him. 
Beer would have saved both his empire and his 



1 68 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

temper. If Hamlet had been acquainted with 
Wiirzburger, pessimism would not have en- 
thralled him. His family skeleton would not 
have rattled through five weary acts of Shake- 
speare. We might have had a comedy of Hamlet. 

Beer is the lubricant in the wheels of history. 
Its salutary effect on the digestion has been estab- 
lished by the Imperial German Board of Health. 
And long before the German Empire had been 
founded, a shrewd New Testament character ad- 
vised a young Apostle to indulge in mild alcoholic 
beverages for his weak stomach's sake and his 
often infirmities. Alcohol exercises a recognized 
function in the religious ceremonies of all civilized 
nations. The Mohammedans, who substitute 
constant sexual stimulation for temporary alcoholic 
excitement, have lagged behind In the race of the 
world's evolution. If teetotalism ever vanquishes 
temperance in the United States, we shall present 
a spectacle more saddening than Turkey. 

I have never been able to understand why so 
many parsons seem to be anxious to controvert the 
first miracle of the Lord. If Christ had been a 
teetotaler, he would not have changed the water 
into wine even at his mother's request. He would 
have turned the wine Into sarsaparilla. I am not 
a Christian minister, but I would not dare dilute 
with Ineffectual words the miraculous wine of 
Cana. 

An American teetotaler has recently drawn an 



GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 169 

interesting comparison between the American and 
the continental method of receiving guests. 
We, he fondly points out, salute our visitors by- 
urging upon them the necessity of lavatory pro- 
cedures. '* Do you want to wash your hands? " 
the American host solicitously inquires. The con- 
tinental host, however, welcomes his guest with an 
honest libation. The point is well taken, and il- 
lustrates the superior manners of the civilized 
European. Why should he insult his guests by 
impugning their cleanliness? Let me inform the 
writer, in case he should be again tempted to travel 
abroad, that the continental host expects his guests 
to wash their hands before they come to his house. 
May he profit by this information ! 

What should we offer a guest but the aromatic 
blood of the hop, or the sparkling gold of the 
grape? If we were Oriental despots, we might 
add to these a beautiful slave girl. The laws of 
the land and economic considerations unfortunately 
compel us to dispense with these affecting tokens 
of appreciation and friendship. Shall they also 
bar wine? Libations have been poured wherever 
friends have met since the days of Homer. The 
wisdom of the East, and the traditions of our 
Teutonic sires, both emphasize the philosophy of 
drink. The soul, as Leibnitz has said, is a house 
without windows. The lock of the door is in- 
crusted with Care. Self-consciousness, with seven 
iron bands, barricades the entrance. Alcohol is 



170 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

the magic key that unlocks the door. Compara- 
tive strangers are transfigured and gladdened by 
the magic of friendship when it has spoken its 
Sesame. Irksome barriers, which normally only 
years of close communion could have shattered, 
are obliterated for the time being. The soul, 
escaping from its cage for a little while, sings and 
soars like a bird. 

People on the continent, especially the Germans, 
take their drinks with refinement. They drink 
as they live — aesthetically. We neither live nor 
drink in beauty. We spend large amounts of 
money on drinking. But the subtleties of the 
Bacchic ceremonial escape us. We are novices 
in the service of the good god Gambrinus. That 
is the reason why our waiters despise us. You 
must have noticed the supercilious servility and 
condescending smile of the French or the German 
waiter when you give him your order. He looks 
down upon us as Barbarians. 

The German thrives on the light glass of beer 
or wine with his meals; whiskey he abhors. We 
are killed off daily and hourly in the dairy restau- 
rants. We shall never have an American art 
while we subsist largely on icewater. The pluto- 
cratic few are well provided in clubs and expensive 
eating-places. The average American depends for 
his lunch on the dairy. Saloons are often un- 
comfortable and obnoxious. What we need is 
Childs' with the added inspiration of spirits. In 



GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 171 

Germany, you find such places everywhere. The 
most famous chain of restaurants is Aschinger's, 
a sort of inspired Childs'. 

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, in his brochure en- 
titled The Gullet of Berlin, avers that every sec- 
ond house in the German metropolis is a place 
where alcohol in some form is vended. Yet 
drunkenness is almost unknown. That is because 
people refrain, as a rule, from strong liquor. I 
am not one of those who would bar even liquor. 
There are times when it is both safe and delightful 
to take a cordial. But — a cordial isn't a drink. 
It is a stimulant, and, taken in excess, a 
poison. Until we can imprint indelibly upon 
our brains the difference between a drink and a 
stimulant, let us keep our hands from the 
whiskey flagon. Who, by the way, is the god 
of Cognac? 

We have the deplorable tendency to vulgarize 
things. We cheapen literature in magazines. 
The Sunday Supplement is the degradation of art. 
We degrade marriage and love in the court-room. 
And we make drinking abominable through vulgar 
and injudicious excesses. We are like the early 
Christians who dethroned the gods of the Pagans 
and made them monstrous and wicked. Jupiter 
was anathematized as a devil. Mercury was 
looked upon as a thief. Phoebus Apollo became 
an evil sorcerer, Cupid an imp of hell, and the 
mother of Cupid — 



172 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

The obscure Venus of the hollow hill, 

The thing transformed that was the Cytherean, 

With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine, . . . 

But the woe of the ancient gods was not ended. 
It remained to the New World to contort the love- 
liness of Bacchus and the benign smile of Gam- 
brinus into the hideous grimace of the Demon 
Rum. 

Germany, as I have said, is the mother of mod- 
eration. We can learn from her, but we can learn 
more from Denmark. The Germans are naturally 
moderate. The Danes incline to drunkenness. 
And we, I am afraid, are more like Danes than 
Germans. There is a certain instability in our 
national temperament that shall no doubt disap- 
pear when the fusion of races has produced the 
American type. 

The Danish brewing industry is of recent 
growth. In 1840, only one hundred and four- 
teen persons, all in all, were engaged in the busi- 
ness, including the workmen. In those days De- 
mon Rum held undisputed sway over Denmark. 
The Danes were drowned in liquor. Their 
bodies, soaked with rum, withstood the teeth of 
corruption In the grave. It was dangerous to 
strike a match in the propinquity of one of Ham- 
let's compatriots. Perhaps the plight of the Dan- 
ish people and of their neighbors, the Swedes, has 
been responsible for the safety match. I am, 



GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 173 

however, not prepared to make an affidavit on 
this. 

At any rate, about 1870, the temperance wave 
struck the little kingdom. The leaders of the 
movement discerned with rare sagacity that intem- 
perance could be fought only with a light alcoholic 
beverage. They talked to the brewers, and the 
brewers talked to each other. After some scratch- 
ing of heads, they finally produced a light beer 
pleasant to the taste, containing a small percentage 
of alcohol. Later on the State took a hand in 
the matter by levying a heavy tax on all beers 
containing more than 2 1-4 per cent, of alcohol 
by weight. Beer with only 2 1-4 per cent, of 
alcohol was not taxed at all. The consequence 
was that all breweries opened up plants for the 
production of temperance beer. 

One-half of all the beer produced In Denmark 
is temperance beer. They speak of this beer as 
" non-alcoholic." Avowed advocates of tem- 
perance relish it. It is kept on tap in every sa- 
loon. If you go to Denmark, by all means try 
" non-alcoholic " Pilsener and " non-alcoholic " 
Muenchener. The Danish brewer is forbidden 
by law to brew beer with over six per cent, alco- 
hol. Beer has almost entirely supplanted rum 
in Denmark. It is beer alone that has saved 
Denmark and Sweden from toppling to drunk- 
ards' graves. If I were a painter, I would de- 
pict Temperance with a jug of foaming Pilsener 



174 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

bearing the legend: "In this sign thou shalt 
conquer.'' 

Denmark, too, has a few extremists who clamor 
for the total elimination of alcohol. They have 
established model saloons, where a drink called 
" Sinalco," or " Liquorless," is vended. With 
heroic determination I tasted this sickening con- 
coction. The innkeeper, a retired officer of the 
army, looked at me half in pity, half in scorn. 
"Do you drink this horrid stuff?" I queried. 
"Yes," he replied; "in fact, ' Sinalco ' is excel- 
lent — with an admixture of whiskey." That, it 
seems to me, is an amusing illustration of the 
failure of absolute prohibition. 

Recently an " International Association against 
the Exaggeration of the Opponents of Alcohol " 
has been founded in Berlin. The reports of the 
association will be published regularly in a schol- 
arly manner. Their object will be truth, not 
propaganda. Their experiments will tend to dis- 
prove once for all that alcohol is an absolute poi- 
son and that moderate indulgence in alcoholic 
beverages necessarily leads to intemperance. They 
will settle the question definitely. If the result 
of their scientific investigations should lead them 
to contrary, unanticipated conclusions, they will not 
hesitate to confess defeat. But that exigency can- 
not arise. It would contradict the experiences of 
mankind from the pre-Christian era to Christ, 
from Christ to his Vicars in Rome, and reverse 



GAMBRINUS AND BACCHUS 175 

the verdict of science from Aristotle to Miinster- 
berg. 

It was Miinsterberg who recently knocked the 
bottom out of the prohibition argument. He re- 
stated for the New World the experience of the 
Old wlien he affirmed that the human system 
absolutely needs a stimulus of some kind. If we 
abolish alcohol, sexual and other irregularities will 
take Its place. The Anti-Liquor people were 
foaming at the mouth. Miinsterberg's argu- 
ments could not be shaken nor his authority ques- 
tioned. 

The professional prohibitionists remind me of 
the exorcists of olden days. The people came 
to them to drive out devils. The tribes of magi- 
cians and medicine men waxed fat and happy, 
until humanity discovered that there were no 
devils at all, and that, at any rate, they could not 
be driven out. The antagonists of temperance 
in the prohibition camp have humbugged the 
American people by their pretense of driving out 
Old Nick, when lo, Professor Miinsterberg lifted 
the veil from their sham, and we discovered that 
alcohol was not a devil. 

Meanwhile Demon Rum thrived and flourished, 
until he has come to be really a menace. You 
can fight wildfire effectually only with fire. You 
can fight liquor only with beer. But, of course, 
had the Demon been properly subjugated, the 
officials of the Anti-Saloon League would have 



176 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

been out of a job. It's a mighty dangerous thing 
to oppose an enemy by mercenaries whose existence 
depends on keeping that enemy alive ! 

They are very clever, these Anti-Saloon Lea- 
guers. But when they're up against an honest 
man, they don't understand. They invented a 
pretty little trap for the Harvard professor. 
Through three different literary agencies they 
swamped him with flattering offers from an al- 
leged group of brewers who were very anxious 
indeed to have him write an article on the ad- 
vantage of drinking beer — " Money no object." 
The professor dropped the missives into his waste- 
paper basket. 

Let those who favor total abstinence follow 
the lead of the new International Association. 
Let them investigate coolly and calmly. 
Meanwhile let us profit by the experience of 
Europe. Triumphantly on an ocean of beer 
the Ship of Temperance reaches its destined haven. 



CHAPTER XIV 

WE AND EUROPE 

Having explained at some length how I re- 
gard Europe, let us now discuss how Europe re- 
gards us. Permit me to state right here that In 
using the plural of the first person I am not re- 
ferring to myself, but to the United States of 
America. 

Europe looks upon us as the woman entre 
trente et quarante looks upon a boy of eighteen. 
If I were unkind, I might add that she regards 
us as a woman of moderate means regards the son 
of a millionaire. Every American is supposed to 
be first cousin to Crcesus. Selfishness is certainly 
mixed with Madame Europe's sensuous delight in 
us. She is quite prepared to borrow money from 
us. Her fondness for us nevertheless is perfectly 
genuine. She is partial to striplings, — a sweet 
little woman, with the delightful perversion of the 
fascinating age so graphically depicted by Balzac. 
We stir her sensually, just as the continental man 
stirs the American woman. 

Europe is in love with our primltlveness. Our 
young Barbarians all at play kindle in her a pas- 

177 



178 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

slonal conflagration. She forgives the uncouth- 
ness of our ideas because we are gloriously young. 
Our awkwardness Is to her a symbol of masculine 
robustness. We exert upon her the fascination 
of a Caliban. She does not realize as yet that 
we have lost the virile earthlness of Caliban with- 
out having lost our crudity. She accepts our 
drafts on the future because she never suspects 
that we may, in the end, default payment. 

Of course, at present she does not take us quite 
seriously. There is nothing that bars a book 
from success in England as effectually as an Amer- 
ican furore. I know, for that is what hap- 
pened to me. Germany reads our books occa- 
sionally, but always with a smile of amusement. 
She reads them half ashamed, as we read " Nick 
Carter." Still, our vitality Impresses the cultured 
and effete European. He admires at least the 
strenuoslty of two representative and dynamic 
American types : Roosevelt and Barnum. 

We are forgiven much because we are regarded 
as being still outside the pale of civilization. 
Europe will not be surprised at anything we may 
do. ^' American " and " grotesquely vulgar " are 
almost synonymous terms. The newspapers espe- 
cially are responsible for the most absurd miscon- 
ceptions of the American character. 

There was a time when one might have inferred 
that the inimitable Baron von Munchausen had 
left innumerable lineal descendants with a genius 



WE AND EUROPE 179 

for journalism, and that all were in the New 
World as correspondents for dailies in Berlin. 
Many of his progeny are still engaged in their 
successful conspiracy against truth; but, in spite of 
their efforts, a saner understanding of us has per- 
meated the German cerebrum. For this trans- 
formation we are chiefly indebted to that exchange 
of intellectual commodities christened Kulturaus- 
tausch by the Germans. 

On the wave of this movement a vast number 
of able observers, men of acumen and Insight, 
have visited the United States and embodied their 
impressions in divers publications. Some of their 
books — most of them — are sheer nonsense. In 
a few, however, the wheat outweighs the chaff. 

Ludwig Fulda's American impressions are 
avowedly personal and sketchy. Nevertheless, he 
has made some shrewd and felicitous observations. 
Von Polenz, the late novelist, is responsible for a 
very readable and altogether remarkable American 
book. 

Professor Hugo Miinsterberg has done for 
Germany what Bryce has done for England. His 
book on America is an inquiry into the essential 
and fundamental American idea. It Is a large 
interpretation of our national life. H. G. Wells 
alone has developed, in his prophetic vision of 
our future, similarly stupendous horizons. H. G. 
Wells and the Harvard professor are intellectual 
kinsmen. Both men have in common the analyt- 



i8o CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

ical faculty of the man of science and the 
quick Intuition of poets. (Professor Miinster- 
berg, I may here betray in parenthesis, is the 
author of a book of strangely chiseled and pas- 
sionate verse.) 

Wells and Miinsterberg Illumine with ultra- 
violet rays the obscurest crevices of Individual and 
racial psychology. Wells somewhere says that 
the figure of Miinsterberg stands out In bold re- 
lief from his Harvard colleagues by Its German 
characteristics. I think for once Mr. Wells is 
mistaken. Miinsterberg would be equally con- 
spicuous in any company of men, at home or 
abroad. We look upon him, however, as a fixture 
in our own intellectual household. His American 
traits are as pronounced as his German peculiari- 
ties. He Is a citizen of the world, drawing his 
strength from many civilizations. We may hope 
that this type, almost lost in Europe — the poets 
and scholars of the Renaissance were its only pre- 
cursors — may rise modernized and transfigured 
from the crucible of American civilization. 

It Is the foreigner who Is most apt In character- 
izing the peculiarities of a people. Ludwig Max 
Goldberger, Privy Councilor to the Kaiser, has 
clinched In one significant phrase all that the 
New World stands for In the eyes of the Old. 
We are the land of " unlimited possibilities." 
That is what makes us so interesting to Europe. 
Like our own Rip Van Winkle, we have slumbered 



WE AND EUROPE 

for centuries. In fact, we have hardly rubbed our 
eyes awake since we drove the Redcoats away. 
The awakening of America will be more startling 
than the awakening of China. 

As an economist, Goldberger's primary interest 
has been in industrial problems. His book is a 
good book, a big book. The man himself Is a 
powerful agent of the culture exchange. It is 
one of the chief characteristics of being a coun- 
cilor that the Emperor never requires one's coun- 
sel. Goldberger's case is a brilliant exception. 
Whenever an American topic clouds the horizon 
of discussion, the government as well as the press 
turn to him for illumination. 

Goldberger is only one of the nuclei In a large 
circle of eminent men whose sympathies are al- 
ways enlisted in affairs of mutual benefit to Ger- 
many and the United States. There is, above all, 
von Holleben, the polished and jovial former am- 
bassador. His Excellency, while advanced in 
years, is a potent factor in German politics. It 
was von Holleben who first recognized the im- 
portance of the university as a postilion d'amour 
between nations. Professors Brandl and Pasz- 
kowski, both of the University of Berlin, are ar- 
dent supporters of the close Intellectual courtship 
between their country and ours. Both have visited 
the United States repeatedly. Paszkowski is the 
director of the Official University Information Bu- 
reau, through which he directs and, to a certain 



i82 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

extent, controls the exchange of students. Pro- 
fessor Schlemann, a friend of the Kaiser, and an 
authority on political subjects, devotes no small 
part of his attention to us. Two ministers of 
state, Hentlg and Moeller, have also made special 
Investigations of American Institutions. The 
prime mover of the whole American agitation, 
however. Is that Prince of Peace, WUHam II. 

It has been an open secret for many years that 
it Is the wish of William's heart to discover Amer- 
ica for himself. I know positively that not very 
long ago every preparation for his departure to 
the New World had been made with the profound 
secrecy characteristic of German diplomacy. The 
German Ambassador In Washington had carefully 
mapped out plans for the safety of the monarch. 
The Foreign Office, however, was opposed to the 
visit and at the last moment prevailed upon the 
Emperor to abandon his project, for reasons of 
international etiquette. The Inability of the Presi- 
dent of the United States to reciprocate the cour- 
tesy of an Imperial visit, while vested with the 
sovereignty of his office, thwarted what would 
have been an historic event of Incalculable im- 
portance. 

I am felicitating myself that my brief sojourn 
in Berlin has been a factor, however slight, in 
crystallizing the pro-American sentiment. We are 
all urged by the deep-rooted instinct, identical 
perhaps with the will to hve, that prompts us to 



WE AND EUROPE 183 

leave behind us, of the various phases of our exist- 
ence, traces more permanent than ourselves. 

To that Instinct are we Indebted for art. We 
owe to It poetry, photography, music and sculp- 
ture. The child writing upon the sand, or Michael 
Angelo- writing In marble; the Alpine climber im- 
printing his futile initials upon the ironic face of 
the rock, and Shakespeare embalming his love In 
a sonnet — all are swayed by the same masterful 
impulse, to perpetuate the perennially transient. 
The Church Itself rose in response to this impulse 
in Jesus; He lives In the bread and wine of com- 
munion. And is not marriage likewise the issue 
of the desire to Imprison eternally fugitive emo- 
tions? 

While I have founded neither a household nor 
a religion, I have at least commemorated my Ber- 
lin days in the German-American Evening. This 
Institution — for as such it may now be regarded — 
leaped Athene-like from my brain when I de- 
livered a lecture before a brilliant bi-lingual assem- 
blage at the Hotel de Rome, in a banquet hall 
consecrated by exchange-professorial tradition to 
things American in the capital of the Kaiser. The 
lecture, subsequently repeated before the Colonial 
Society and the sovereign Burgomaster of Ham- 
burg, outlined German Influences on American 
civilization. The invitations bore the names of 
several ambassadors, ministers of state, privy coun- 
cilors, and of distinguished professors. I men- 



1 84 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

tion these facts because they are significant of the 
interest entertained among the dominant intellec- 
tual minority in ambassadors from the New 
World, be they diplomats, pedagogues or poets. 

The support of this solid faction is more Im- 
portant than the support of the people. By this 
I do not intimate that the people are unfriendly 
to us, but we cannot ask untutored brains to grasp 
the actual import to them of a distant continent 
teeming with millions of human atoms. The Ger- 
man people at large regard us still through the 
romantic haze of Cooper's tales. A few of the 
more advanced eye us through the spectacles of 
Villiers de I'Isle Adam's fantastical description of 
Edison, the magician. 

We, being less imaginative, are even more un- 
just to the Germans. Our knowledge of Germany 
is largely deduced from Viennese comic operas, 
and the novels of George Barr McCutcheon. We 
are, however, equally ignorant of our own coun- 
try. We have not even a clear mental Image of 
Missouri or Texas. We certainly have no defi- 
nite knowledge of the determining ethnic factors 
in the sum of our racial characteristics. 

We are satisfied that we have received our cul- 
ture, as well as our language, from the Pilgrim 
Fathers. We look upon England as our mother, 
although we are no less closely related to the coun- 
try of Nietzsche and Frederick the Great. The 
facts may be gathered from the bulky volumes of 



WE AND EUROPE 185 

learned professors. Read, for Instance, Professor 
Faust. I refuse to weigh down the good ship of 
my style with statistics. Statistics are proverbially 
mendacious. The German Influence by far sur- 
passes the German Influx. 

We are a Germanic, not an Anglo-Saxon people. 
The Norseman discovered America five hundred 
years before Columbus. And despite the historical 
evidence to the contrary, the Dutch still hold New 
York. Pennsylvania was on the point of making 
German the ofl'iclal state language. In the year 
before the Declaration of Independence, a group 
of Germans in Philadelphia issued a similar procla- 
mation defying the King. German money fed the 
flame of the Revolution when It was almost ex- 
hausted. Frederick the Great was the first Euro- 
pean monarch who oflicially recognized American 
Independence. The Kaiser in courting America 
merely continues the policy of his ancestor. The 
Emancipation of the Slaves and the Fifteenth 
Amendment, I regret to say, must also, at least In 
part, be credited to the Germans. 

The Germans are the salt of the earth, the 
chosen people of the New Order. The French- 
man, Gobineau, and the Englishman, Professor 
Chamberlain of the University of Vienna, have 
startled the world by rewriting history authenti- 
cally from the point of view of the Aryan. The 
most radical of their disciples claim the universe 
for the Germans. Even Jesus, we are told, be- 



1 86 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

longed to a tribe suffused with Aryan-Germanic 
blood. I am not prepared to maintain that the Cru- 
cified was a German, but I am convinced that Pilate, 
his judge, was, as the Pan-Germans claim, Ger- 
manic by blood. This theory bears the earmark 
of psychological truth. I can touch it and feel it. 
I dearly love to think that the Roman Governor 
may have been one of my forbears. He evidently 
was one of the forbears of Kant. " What is 
truth? '* — the eternal query ringing down the ages 
could have sprung only from the lips and the 
brooding brain of a Teuton. 

Greece, in the days of its bloom, continues the 
Pan-German argument, was a nation purely Ger- 
manic. (I am reminded here again of the purely 
Germanic features of Plato.) When the German 
blood ebbed away, corruption and corrosion poi- 
soned the Athenian body politic. These hypothe- 
ses are plausible if fantastic, although I suspect 
that their authors have stretched their point until 
it resembles a man, naturally short in stature, who 
has rested a night under the roof of Procrustes. 

We need not draw upon mythology, however, 
to convince ourselves that English is merely a cor- 
rupted Low German dialect. (Remember, dear 
reader, that I have always insisted upon the aes- 
thetic qualities of corruption.) Our education, 
our art, and our science are ineradicably German. 
Our soil itself welcomes the German. The Eng- 
lishman is, after all, only a German with a Norman 



WE AND EUROPE 187 

veneer. In America the veneer drops off. By 
brain-jfiber and by blood we are more German than 
English. These reflections are not mine, I am 
sorry to say, but emanate from an Anglo-Amer- 
ican, Professor John W. Burgess, that excellent 
friend - of the Kaiser. Professor Marlon D. 
Learned, of the University of Pennsylvania, speaks 
of himself as a "Yankee-German"; and the dis- 
tinguished Goethe student. Professor Calvin 
Thomas of Columbia, refers to himself as a " Ger- 
man-American by elective affinity." 

Of course, I have used the word " German " 
In the broader sense of Germanic. My readers, 
like those of Plato, must accustom themselves to 
subtle discriminations. The Germans, as distin- 
guished from their Anglo-Saxon cousins, have a 
vital function In the making of our nation. They 
furnish an antidote to the venom of Puritanism. 
I myself have always supplied that antidote lib- 
erally. 

The victory of the liberal Teutonic spirit Is 
clearly and perfectly foreshadowed In the two fore- 
most Americans politically, Roosevelt and Taft. 
Theodore, with all his faults. Is not, thank 
Heaven, a Puritan. W. H. Taft, whom I have 
always loved for the Shakespearean flavor of his 
Initials, Is a powerful champion of broad tolerance. 

But I have been drifting upon the perilous seas 
of ethnological speculation. Let us rub the magic 
ring, and presto, we are back once more where 



1 88 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

we started, In the brilliantly lighted hall of the 
Hotel de Rome. Tout Berlin Is present and ap- 
parently Interested, and the motion Is made and 
carried to perpetuate the German-American Even- 
ing. 

The principal speaker of the second German- 
American Evening, six months later, was the 
author of my being. Let me state that I am not 
alluding to my father In Heaven, but to my father 
on earth. The third German-American Evening 
was an elaborate occasion. Grand Admiral von 
Koster, newly returned from the Hudson-Fulton 
celebration, October, 1909 (I mention the date for 
the benefit of posterity), rendered his homage to 
the American people. Dr. Wheeler of the Uni- 
versity of California, and Professor Moore of 
Harvard, addressed the assemblage In English. 

I hope that the German-American Evening will 
constitute a permanent forum for the discussion 
of things German-American In Berlin. But I shall 
make no such prediction, lest three hundred years 
from this writing some spectacled, post-graduate 
student, having lampooned Shakespeare^s geogra- 
phy. Impeach my historical prophecy in an elabo- 
rate dissertation. 

I wonder what would have happened if a cer- 
tain Distinguished Personage had scaled the plat- 
form on one of the German-American Evenings, 
and revealed to a listening world what privately 
he has confided to me. 



WE AND EUROPE 189 

Let me say right here that It will be quite im- 
possible to fathom his identity. The things he 
said to me were so startling that, had they been 
said by a man of lesser caliber, I should not here 
set them down. The interview took place at his 
dweHing. I shall not describe the dwelling. I 
shall not describe even the room. I don't know 
that I could describe it. The moment he entered 
I saw only his eyes. Strange eyes they were, pierc- 
ing, like those of a visionary. He gazed at me 
in a way that almost gave me the creeps. His 
eyes seemed to look straight through me. I don't 
like people to see through me. That is the reason 
I shall never marry a clever woman. Of course, 
I won't be able to help it, if she insists on marry- 
ing me. 

He looked at me for five minutes. Then he 
spoke. There were no commonplaces in what he 
said, no conversational mortar to fill the cracks of 
silence. Gradually I regained my self-possession. 
We came to talk of America. I painted in glow- 
ing colors the invincibility of the young republic. 
I always talk well of my country behind her back. 

" Yes," he said, slowly, deliberately. " Your re- 
sources are boundless, and yet — there are dangers." 

"What are these dangers?" 

" Grave and terrible perils that will force you 
to lean upon the staff of the Old World. 

" There Is, in the first place, the Social Danger. 
Some of you have realized that. The forces of 



190 CONFESSIOI^JS OF A BARBARIAN 

Anarchy and Capitalism are close to a clash. You 
may smile, but I say to you that a revolution is 
imminent. You have eyes that see not, and your 
ears are deaf. Perhaps Taft will lead you Moses- 
like out of the wilderness. But you do not realize 
that you have lost your way. Reports of violence, 
conflict and lawlessness, accumulate day by day. 
We over here take note of them; you do 
not. 

" You are so big that you lose sight of the 
whole. You know nothing of the country at large. 
Your newspapers are provincial. Your interests 
are local. The American press fails in its duty to 
you. Unpleasant facts are kept out of print. 
Everything relating to social conflicts is prettily 
dressed up before it is meted out to you. Your 
papers print every word of some sensational trial, 
but I look in vain for reports of the doings of Con- 
gress. The speeches of your representatives are 
buried in the Congressional Record. The opinions 
of amiable criminals and strumpets are commented 
upon in press-room and pulpit. You are chatter- 
ing monkeys, brainlessly absorbed in the present, 
unheedful of the imminent earthquake. We hear 
its grumblings across the sea. Like the nobles 
of the court of Louis XVI, you dance in the 
shadow of the guillotine.'' 

I looked at him questioningly. He was not 
jesting. Slowly, deliberate, he continued: 

" There is a danger even greater than a revolu- 



WE AND EUROPE 191 

tlon, and one from which there is no escape. I 
think that you as a people do not reahze the im- 
mensity of your negro problem. There is no way 
to prevent the slow amalgamation of races. The 
inferior race will drag you down. History and 
science indorse my view. There is no possibility 
of eliminating that black tumor from your na- 
tional system. By the laws of racial osmosis, you 
cannot prevent it from staining the skins and the 
brain-cells of your descendants. In perhaps two 
or three hundred years you will be a nation of 
octoroons. I can see the specter of a half-breed 
despot, the first American emperor. In your folly 
you have demolished the bars between citizenship 
and the negro. You have shattered the strong- 
hold of racial prejudice. 

*' In Germany, the Colonial Society has peti- 
tioned the government to exclude from citizenship 
the children of mixed marriages in the colonies. 
There is tragedy in such severity. The Booker 
T. Washingtons m^ay have to suffer. Better for 
them had they never been born. An intelligent 
negro, like the child prodigy, is a monster. The 
negro, like woman, is incapable of self-govern- 
ment. He is inferior even to woman. 

*' We Aryans are the appointed masters of the 
world. God has made the white race the guar- 
dian of His holy fire. We must cast out the half- 
breed from the sanctuary. There is only one sal- 
vation for you. And even that cannot altogether 



192 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

save you from deterioration. Call upon Europe 
for aid. Throw open your gates to all the peoples 
of the earth who are your kindred. Widen the 
gulf between black and white. Even encourage 
dissipation among the negroes. The end justifies 
the means. 

'' Keep out the Mongol lest he conspire with 
the African. Asia is your enemy. Her unctuous 
grin conceals the fury of her hate. She is most 
your enemy when most she loves you. Let her 
not drag down your sons and daughters Into the 
slime of her ancient corruption. Let her meet you 
in deadly combat rather than In deadlier embrace. 
Let her sons fight your sons', not furnish your 
daughters with husbands. 

" We Germans want to keep our people where 
they are. We know that blood and muscle are 
precious. We actually do import German peas- 
ants from Russia. We do not want them to go 
to you. But for your own sake, I tell you not 
to restrict immigration. The restriction of im- 
migration is national suicide." 

There was something strangely prophetic in this 
man. For the moment I was under the spell of 
his extraordinary prediction. But when I set foot 
again in America I was infected anew with the 
indomitable optimism that has been our salvation 
in the past and may be our doom in the future. 

Again he spoke, and again I was inclined to dis- 
pute his views. 



WE AND EUROPE 193 

" There Is still another danger — the greatest.'* 

*'The trusts?" 

" Yes, the greatest of all trusts — the most ancient 
monopoly. Are you freedom-loving Americans 
purblind ? Don't you notice the web of the spider ? 
Don't you see him circling about you? Have you 
no Intimation of the peril that will be the end of 
your liberty, and hamper your feet In the onward 
march of the nations? " 

"What can that be?' 

His eyes gleamed more strangely than ever. 
He tossed back his hair and I saw the forehead 
furrowed with thought and care. 

" I mean the Roman Catholic Church. The 
prelates at Rome openly proclaim among them- 
selves that the Church must regain In the New 
World what she has lost In the Old. Don't you 
feel the tentacles tightening? Don't you notice 
the growth of the Catholic sentiment? Before 
long Roman Catholics will be elected to high 
offices. Finally, the presidency itself will be in the 
grasp of the Church." 

" I do not share your antipathy to the Church," 
I Interrupted. '' Catholics are good citizens. I 
believe In tolerance for all. I do not believe that 
the Church will ever exercise great political in- 
fluence in America. The arm of the Pope Is 
long, but it cannot effectually reach across the 



sea." 



*^ Perhaps. But the Pope himself may cross 



194 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

the sea. The Papacy In Italy Is doomed. Fugi- 
tive popes In the past have fled to France. Whither 
should the Holy Father flee to-day? I have posi- 
tive knowledge that the Inner Circle of the gov- 
ernment of the Church have outlined a campaign 
that will enable the Pope, If occasion arises, ta 
establish his power and rear the throne of St. 
Peter on American soil. In the shadow of that 
throne your freedom will perish.'* 

I was stunned for the moment. If any man 
but this man had spoken, I would have laughed 
in his face. Was he a maniac? Was he a proph- 
et? Or both? I can only repeat what he said, 
as I reiterated it to myself later when, bewildered 
but still Impressed by his curious and insist- 
ent mentality, I strode through the streets of 
Berlin. 

We expect life to run perpetually unruffled. We 
are inclined to regard as deranged those whose 
vasion is clearer than ours. The world has always 
crucified its saviors and prophets. The cataclysms 
of history seem logical and inevitable to Impartial 
posterity. They are utterly surprising to those 
whom the clash destroys. The unknown force that 
makes playthings of nations and gods, mercifully 
strikes us with blindness. 

A dozen anxious questions rushed to the tip of 
my tongue, but before I had time to marshal my 
thoughts, a uniformed attendant Interrupted us a 
second time. 



WE AND EUROPE 195 

" His Royal Highness,'* I heard him whisper, 
*' has been waiting for several minutes." 

Half skeptically, half perplexed, I kowtowed, 
and left the field to the Royal Highness. 



CHAPTER XV 

I AND AMERICA 

My German friends tell me I am extremely 
American. They mean to Imply that I am not 
an Idealist. I admit that I have a bank account, 
and that, In many ways, I am a Barbarian. Like 
most celebrated Americans, I am really a self-made 
man. Let me here throw 'light on the obscurest 
chapter of my autobiography. 

Soon after we had arrived In this country, my 
father, having seen the bankruptcy of the intellect 
abroad, determined that I was to be a son 
of the soil. I was given into the care of a Balti- 
more florist, and earned at least my " keep '' at 
the age of twelve. In the morning I went to 
town with chrysanthemums, roses and smilax; and 
there was an old lady who bought my flowers from 
me and always gave me a tip. I was very thank- 
ful for that tip. I recently found a letter of mine 
written to my father, in those Baltimore days. 
In which I informed him that twenty-five cents a 
week pocket-money would place me on a sound 
financial basis. 

When the day's toil was done, I devoted my 

196 



I AND AMERICA 197 

leisure hours to a libretto entitled A Rustic Don 
Juan, and to a novel, Eleanore, the Autohigraphy 
of a Degenerate Woman. My boss, fortunately 
or unfortunately, was also a poet. For a brief 
space we lived in Arcadia. But when, instead of 
nursing the flowers, we nursed our admiration for 
each other, business began to languish, and a fran- 
tic appeal from the florist's wife compelled my 
father to take me back. 

I was now apprenticed to a florist in New York 
City at five or six dollars a week. I ran errands, 
and wrote a poem to the proprietor's wife. I 
am afraid I was somewhat of a nuisance. I didn't 
know the difference between East and West. I 
took bouquets to impossible places. I was in- 
ordinately proud of some verses of mine that had 
managed to creep into print. I had been engaged 
at Christmas. After the holidays I was dis- 
charged. I think they still owe me three dollars 
— half a week's wages. Some day I shall try 
to collect them. 

My father at last relaxed in his grim determina- 
tion, and I was once more a schoolboy. When, 
two years later, I graduated from a Public School, 
I was the valedictorian. And ever after, like all 
other valedictorians, I have been perfectly useless. 
My ignorance Is as many-sided as it is profound. 
Owing to our many changes of residence, my 
schooling has been frequently interrupted. There 
are curious gaps in my education. I can't punc- 



198 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

tuate, spell, sing, or draw. I am blissfully igno- 
rant of grammar, geography and arithmetic. I 
was absent from school the day we had the mul- 
tiplication table. God alone knows how I drifted 
through college. 

In Europe I would have been regarded as a 
youthful prodigy. That might have made me 
conceited. In America, we expect youth to take 
upon its shoulders the work of the world. Europe 
heeds the voice of graybeards. She is also fas- 
cinated by bluebeards. But a beard, it seems, is 
absolutely essential. If I lived abroad, I would 
still be dependent upon my father. Thus, a law- 
yer I met in Berlin referred to himself as a " young 
man of forty," and still counted every week upon 
the paternal allowance. But he possessed savoir 
faire. He was a matchless dancer and a witty 
table companion. Socially, no doubt, the Euro- 
peans are our superiors. 

I did not meet many Americans abroad. I let 
the American Colony severely alone. There are 
eighty million Americans In the New World. 
There will be more presently. I did not go abroad 
to add new exemplars to my collection. Of 
course, I never called on my fellow-passengers. 
I met three of them — the two little girls with their 
mother, the Hen — on the street. I understand 
they are doing exceedingly well. But the girl with 
the pathetic eyes has fulfilled my prediction. She 
was the only American victim of a railroad acci- 



I AND AMERICA 199 

dent on the Mockernhriicke In Berlin. Her 
bright small voice is hushed forever. The alien 
mould has encompassed her little limbs. 

Still, good people, dry your tears. Like Lion, 
in a Midsummer Night's Dream, I am, in reality, 
a *' gentle beast of good conscience." As far as 
I know, the lady is still alive. But for the purpose 
of this book it was essential to kill her. I had 
prophesied evil things for her, and it would have 
been crudely inartistic to let the loose strands of my 
story dangle irritatingly before the eyes of the 
reader. Nero set a city on fire for the sake of a 
beautiful phrase. Why should not I, to soothe 
my artistic conscience, dispatch one hapless girl? 

The distance between America and Europe, I 
believe, is three thousand miles. But the distance 
between Europe and America is three thousand 
years. News from home seems to travel with the 
exasperating slowness of an invalid centipede. 
The cable merely whets the appetite without ap- 
peasing the hunger. The Paris edition of the 
New York Herald is principally devoted to local 
gossip. There are two or three publications In 
English. I grasped at them as a drowning man 
at a straw. But it happened to be the straw that 
broke the camel's back. The camel of my pa- 
tience rose on its hind legs. 

It was in the whirl of the Presidential cam- 
paign. But when I tearfully asked for the bread 
of information, Europe presented me with a stone. 



200 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

A vague feeling of dissatisfaction, like malaria, 
invaded my blood. The nudities of Olga Des- 
mond were powerless to charm me. The glitter- 
ing uniforms of the soldiers had lost their glamor 
for me. I became Increasingly conscious of the 
distance that divided me from the Western world. 
Like a secret mouse, patriotism, nimble-toothed, 
nibbled away at my heart. 

Then came election night, with Its delirious and 
delightful uncertainties. The earlier part of the 
evening I spent at the house of Ludwig Max 
Goldberger. The Consul-General and his charm- 
ing wife were among the guests. The atmosphere 
was surcharged with passionate Interest In things 
American. But the city without was lulled in 
slumber. Never the sound of a rattle, nor the 
cadenced "Extry!" of the newsboys! I pic- 
tured to myself the crowds surging In waves be- 
fore those bulletin boards in my far-away Nineveh. 
I was one with them. I was carried away by 
their emotional frenzy. And my excitement af- 
fected the others. Telepathically the emotion of 
those millions vibrated through our brains. We 
yelled with them, not indeed with our throats, but 
with our immortal souls. 

Our gathering broke up comparatively early. 
Special cable reports of the election — think of it, 
enviable American in Akron, O. ! — special cable 
reports would be read at the Adlon. So ran the 
announcement that lifted us heavenward as Jupiter 



I AND AMERICA 201 

transported Europa upon his horns. A throng 
of Americans had assembled in the palatial vesti- 
bule of the German Waldorf-Astoria. How I 
loved to listen to their speculations I How sweet 
the resiliency of those nasal twangs. They were 
my own people I This, for one night, was 
home! 

It was about twelve o'clock at night, five hours 
later than in New York. The polls had hardly 
been closed for two hours. With exasperating 
slowness the news trickled through the bed of the 
ocean. But, of course, the returns were very 
meager for several hours. Newspaper opinion 
had been so effectively manipulated in the preced- 
ing months, that we in Europe were blindly fum- 
bling and grumbling for facts in the general con- 
fusion. 

Quietly amidst the excited throng the Ambassa- 
dor of the United States sat back in his chair, 
chatting. David Jayne Hill is the most popular 
ambassador in the capital of the Kaiser. From 
the first, Berlin has treated Hill with the con- 
sideration that one bestows on a guest who has 
been inadvertently wounded. What in the be- 
ginning was courtesy has crystallized into habit. 
Hill's personal fascination has captivated the Ger-~ 
mans. The Americans likewise adore him. His 
simplicity is in itself distinction. Instead of as- 
suming a comic opera uniform that provokes the 
ridicule of the cognoscenti, he appears even at 



202 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

functions of state In the unostentatious apparel of 
any other American gentleman. 

There was a time when ambassadors were but 
the mouthpieces of the sovereigns who made them. 
To-day the ambassador Is the spokesman of the 
people he serves. The ambassador of to-morrow 
will be the poet bearing forward the torch of his 
people's genius. Even to-day the most Important 
embassies are placed In the hands of men of lit- 
erary attainment. James Bryce and M. Jusserand 
are distinguished men of letters. Count Bern- 
storff, the German Ambassador In Washington, 
is a brilliant speaker. When I first met Dr. Hill, 
I knew him to be the author of several philosophi- 
cal works, but I did not know that I was partially 
indebted to him for whatever graces of style I 
may possess. I had no idea that the man clothed 
with the sovereignty of the United States was the 
author of my old college text-book — Hlirs Rhet- 
oric, 

Between three and four o'clock in the morning 
we knew that Bryan had been overwhelmed by the 
usual landslide. There was general rejoicing. 
The proprietor of the Adlon spoke a word of 
command, and champagne rained like manna. An 
unseen band began to play " My Country, 'Tis of 
Thee," and the rhythm of the music blended with 
the beat of my heart. It is quite probable that 
there was no band. My recollections of the rest 
of the evening are obscured by a roseate haze. 



I AND AMERICA 203 

That night I was unfaithful to Europe. My 
heart longed for America fiercely, as the cannibal 
yearns for his peculiar diet. Madame Europe, 
you are very wonderful, though In your youth you 
were a goose and fell In love with a bull. Colum- 
bia is very naive, I admit, but there is a certain 
charm in her inexperience. I admire your knowl- 
edge, Madame. There is fascination in your lips, 
painted, and salt with sophistication. But some- 
times I am chilled by the feeling that perhaps 
you are merely an old coquette. I wonder whether 
your Ideals, too, are not powder and paint. There 
is a cynical twist in your smile that exasperates 
me beyond endurance. 

We, I think, are more genuine, after all. We 
imagine we are sophisticated, but that is a fond 
delusion. Columbia is like a squaw who insists 
on wearing beauty plasters all over her face. Such 
artificialities, Madame Europe, are becoming to 
you. They enhance the fascination of a rococo 
lady. They are ludicrous on the face of the 
squaw. But we shall get over those things. We 
shall be frankly Barbarian. The Middle Ages 
have not bequeathed their wisdom to us; neither 
have they left us their folly. 

Our common sense is refreshing. There is the 
Father of our Country. I have made fun of him 
once in a while. Yet I admire George Washing- 
ton. I take off my hat to him. Everybody can 
die for his country. It takes a higher courage to 



204 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

run away for it. George Washington ran away 
for eight years. Think of the superb legs of 
George running through the swamps of New Jer- 
sey! If Washington had been a European he 
would not have run away. He would have died 
for his country — and we might still be an English 
province. 

Yes, Madame, I repeat, you are very wonder- 
ful; and you eat truffles for breakfast. But one 
tires of truffles. Oatmeal Is more conducive to 
health. And not every one who dehghts In truffles 
Is a gourmet. It Is a taste that the gourmet and 
the hog have In common. And, Madame, I beg 
your pardon, — not all your lovers are gourmets. 
But they are all weary with world-wisdom. 
They suffer from mental Indigestion. Our In- 
digestion Is due to mince pie. Your stomach 
balks at Nietzsche and Stirner. Besides, you 
are very ungrateful. Vainly your Hauptmanns 
and Sudermanns perform Intellectual acrobatics. 
Hardly a smile responds from lips eternally 
bored. You are a child of the spouse of Mar- 
cus Aurellus: 

// one should love you with real love, 
Such things have been — . . . 

* * * * * 

You*d give him, poison, shall we say? 
Or what, Faustinef 



I AND AMERICA 205 

You are fascinating, but be wise. Madame, I 
counsel you : put not your faith in striplings. The 
white magic of virginity defeats the black magic 
of Circe. Thinking it over, I shall not keep house 
with you, Madame. Somehow, after all, my heart 
goes out to Columbia. The cynical smile around 
your cruel mouth deepens. I know what it in- 
sinuates. The roue, you say, delights in the se- 
duction of innocence. But I am not a roue. Not 
mine the loathsome emotion of Verlaine in that 
most morbid sonnet ever penned by the hand of 
man. 

I shall not corrupt America. I am myself un- 
corrupted at heart. I have passed through fires 
of sin, but they have not singed a hair of my 
head. Mine shall be the nobler pleasure of im- 
parting knowledge. And I shall teach Columbia 
what you have taught me. I shall not teach her 
all. Of course, people who marry to uplift their 
wives invariably get the worst of it. It is quite 
possible that America will vulgarize me. But 
at least my gifts, whatever they may be, shall be 
thrown into the crucible of the future. Perhaps 
they are needed in the miraculous transformation. 

There was a time when I wavered between two 
literatures. I consulted with friends on both sides 
of the ocean, and it was finally agreed upon that 
America, being poorer than Europe, needed me 
more. I decided to become an American classic. 



2o6 CONFESSIONS OF A BARBARIAN 

I voluntarily deserted the company of Baudelaire 
and of Heine, for that of Longfellow and Whit- 
tier. 

I will not pose as a martyr. It really wasn't 
a matter of choice with me. I can't help being 
an American. I am a son of this soil. What- 
ever I am, America has made me. My feelings 
for her are deeper than gratitude. Like all deep 
things, like love and faith, they are instinctive. 
But I am not sentimental. I am like the lover 
who Is not blind to the faults of his mistress. I 
hate and I love her. 

I was never comfortable abroad. I sometimes 
seem to myself a chameleon — an inverted one. I 
always assume a color at variance with my en- 
vironment. There was an ever tangible barrier 
between Europe and me. The memory of home 
severed us like a sword. I never knew how dearly 
I loved the New World until late one night, when 
the steamer glided into port. New York beck- 
oned to me, glorious and golden in barbaric splen- 
dor. Like a city wrought in fire she arose I Like 
a Titan woman of Baudelaire she drew me upon 
her bosom. 

And I, remembering my entry into Berlin, now 
seemed to myself like a young Barbarian who, 
having escaped unscathed from the Siren City, has 
returned to his pristine love. Marvelous tales 
he tells her, and circles her breasts with strange 
jewels. And only sometimes in the night when, 



I AND AMERICA 207 

listless and uncomprehending, she slumbers beside 
him, his thoughts wander back to perfumed women 
with painted lips and wise, far away beyond the 
watery hills. 



THE END 



311-77-9 



